Grow Value With Lipari Foods' Private Label Options & More

Independent Grocers Alliance members can now grow value through access to store-brand private label opportunities via Lipari’s manufacturing divisions and Lipari’s wide range of quality specialty foods, including: bakery, dairy, deli, packaging, seafood, meat, grocery, foodservice, international specialty, confectionery, frozen retail, and convenience food and beverage products.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Lipari Foods to the IGA Red Oval family,” IGA VP Brand Development Michael La Kier said. “Lipari brings a unique business model to our retailers — not only can they enhance their offerings with unique, quality food items, but they will gain invaluable advice on key categories and merchandising pointers.”

We asked Lipari Foods what IGA members can expect from the partnership. Keep reading to learn more, register for an upcoming webinar, and find out where to see them at The NGA Show this March.

Tell us about Lipari Foods and the key services for our independent grocers.

Lipari Foods was founded in 1963, and we are a leading independent “perimeter of the store” distributor, delivering quality specialty items to 14,000+ customers across 32 states. These specialty items include attributes such as farm-raised, kosher, halal, non-GMO, and more.

We offer 1-2 day delivery to 75% of the U.S. population, and operate six manufacturing facilities, including:

3 cheese processing plants
1FDA confection plant
1USDA fresh food facility
1 jar goods plant

We can private label products for your stores including jar goods, confections, popcorn, cheese, and more. For example, if your store wants to offer Store Name popcorn, we can do that for you! Shoppers love supporting their local independent grocer, and especially love those Store Name specialty items.

Some of Lipari Foods' brands.

How do you plan to help IGA retailers increase sales in your categories?

In addition to the foods we offer, we can help retailers better their businesses. For example, if a customer is looking to reset a section, our category sales managers will come in to help with store resets, retail pricing optimization, and planograms services to maximize shelf space.

But you don't have to reset an aisle to benefit. This year, we will partner with IGA to host several webinars to help retailers improve in key categories. We will then follow up those webinars with playbooks with category insights, merchandising tips, and real-world examples.

Our first webinar will be on March 27, titled, Today's Retail Reality: 20 Ideas for Growing Sales. During the webinar, we will share 20 proven sales ideas to help to separate independent retailers from their competition, grow sales, and deliver a unique value to their shoppers. You will also hear how one retailer created a plan to continuously roll out new events and promotions to grow traffic and sales in their stores.

How can our independent grocers engage with Lipari?

We invite IGA retailers to attend the Lipari Food Show on April 17, 2024 in Novi, Michigan, which is an exclusive annual event for Lipari customers to sample new products and gain product strategy ideas. The show features displays from all of Lipari's product categories. That is the best way to sample and see our products.

Watch highlights of the 2023 Lipari Food Show in the above video.

Finally, Lipari Foods Senior VP Marketing Nick Lenzi will be leading an education session at The NGA Show on Monday, March 11 at 9:45 a.m. in Summit Room 229-230, and we invite IGA attendees to attend. The session, Solving for Shrink one Nickel at a Time, will offer solutions to minimize shrink and improve profitability.

Are you experiencing any supply chain issues and if so, how are you addressing them?

We are no longer seeing the allocation issues we saw in 2022-2023 from the pandemic and the labor issues at manufacturing plants are improving.

In fact, we're feeling great about the supply chain now, as evidenced by the Lipari Food Show. In the past few years, some of our top vendors couldn't participate because of capacity issues ranging from a lack of raw ingredients to labor. But most of those vendors are back and exhibiting at this year's show, which is a positive indicator of where the food supply chain stands today.

What shopper trends are you seeing right now that impact Lipari’s business?

Especially in the Midwest (Lipari Foods is based in Michigan), we are still seeing shoppers favor more impactful buys, which affects our unit volume. They are prioritizing the necessary staples and limiting more elective categories, like confectionery.

As for the rest of the country, the South is our fastest-growing region and the Northeast is right behind it. Demand for our quality products is rising again in these areas and we expect the Midwest to catch up soon.