Your foodservice distribution business is built around dependability and having products for your end users when they need them, especially when the product is hard to find. 

Your food manufacturing business is built around quality and food safety, and you need to know your Partners can adhere to that standard in the supply chain to get the product to the end user. 

No matter which link of the foodservice industry you fall on, trust is the most important factor in ensuring the supply chain doesn’t break. Do your Partners know what they’re doing and will represent your company well? Do you know that the products you rely on are in stock and ready for delivery? Is your supply chain dependable, assuring you that you won’t lose business? The right answers to these questions leads to trust, and trust is how we do business. 

Since 1949, Honor Foods has been a leading foodservice redistributor. Since then, Honor Foods has grown rapidly. Backed by parent company Burris Logistics, a family-owned-and-operated company since 1925, Honor Foods is a premier provider of frozen, refrigerated, dry, and dairy products. With experience and vast industry knowledge, the history and growth of Honor provide new opportunities for customers to grow their businesses from a company where you still know who to call when you have a question. Let’s break down the history and growth of Honor Foods and what that growth means for our distribution and food vendor Partners.

Honor Foods Gets Its Start in Foodservice Redistribution

In 1949, Honor Foods started as a broadline foodservice redistributor. The company was owned by Dick Singer and offered pick-up only. In the mid-1980s, Honor Foods began to deliver products into the Philly marketplace. In 1996, the foodservice redistribution company expanded delivery services to the New York and Baltimore/Washington metropolitan areas. Adding delivery options to these markets allowed Honor Foods to become a larger presence regionally, Partnering with food distribution companies to become a leading foodservice redistributor. 

Honor Foods Is Acquired by Burris Logistics

In 2007, Honor Foods became a Burris Logistics company. Burris Logistics brought their knowledge of cold storage, distribution, and freight management expertise along with the acquisition. In addition, this acquisition allowed Honor Foods to lean on Burris Logistics’ experience of delivering products in larger geographical areas, working with a dedicated fleet and 3rd party carriers for reliable transportation. Having a parent company that genuinely believed in redistribution turned into a springboard that allowed Honor Foods to acquire other companies and eventually invest in a new building.

Burris Logistics has always been a family-owned-and-operated company like Honor Foods, enabling Honor Foods to continue to live by the same principle of stellar customer service and flexibility. 

Honor Foods, a Burris Logistics Company, Acquired Ed Winer and Sons

In 2009, Honor Foods, as a Burris Logistics company, acquired Ed Winer and Sons, another family-owned-and-operated company based in Springfield, Massachusetts, that specialized in dairy products. This new addition allowed Honor Foods to begin serving the New England area, upstate New York, western PA, and Ohio.  

A New Home for Honor Foods, a Premier Provider of Frozen, Refrigerated, Dry, and Dairy Products

In 2021, Honor Foods built a new facility in Philadelphia and consolidated the Philadelphia and Springfield locations. The new building is a 250,000 sq. ft., multi-temp warehouse with 115 thousand sq. feet of frozen capability, 75 thousand square feet of cooler, and 60 thousand square feet of dry with 20,000+ pallet positions and the ability to expand.  In addition, this location has easy on/off access to major highways, including I-95, PA Turnpike, and NJ Turnpike. The facility offers 32 dock doors and 30,000 feet of  refrigerated dock space to expedite loading and unloading. 

The new facility tripled the size and, therefore, capability of Honor Foods, meaning we are able to stock more varieties and work with more food vendors. The increased number of dock doors allows distributors to schedule pick-ups and deliveries more frequently, and the dock space allows quicker loading and unloading. 

Honor Foods, a Burris Logistics Company, Acquired Sommer Maid Creamery

In 2022, Honor Foods, a Burris Logistics Company, acquired Sommermaid Creamery.  Sommermaid Creamery was a family-run business for over 50 years, with over 120 years of continuous operation. The core focus of Sommermaid Creamery is dairy, particularly butter, cheese, and cultured. Sommermaid offered weekly delivery to 29 states with low minimums. They had a strong private label with brand equity and served over 500 customers, including jobber trade, manufacturers, export accounts, and all tiers of distributors. 

Adding Sommer Maid to the Honor Foods portfolio further solidified Honor’s dairy expertise. Working with dairy requires special expertise because of the decreased shelf life compared to frozen goods. By supplying dairy products to the food distribution market, distributors, by nature, visit their end users more frequently, providing the opportunity for growth. In addition, the acquisition of Sommer Maid allowed Honor Foods to expand to the Southeast, now serving states such as Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, and beyond. 

Expanding to the Southeast territory allowed us to begin filling a void in the regional distribution sector of the supply chain in that area. Compared to the Northeast, there are fewer redistribution options in that area. By tapping into Sommer Maid’s expertise and name recognition in that region, we expanded the diary service in the area to include broadline distribution items. This is a great benefit to food vendors, helping them reach markets they may not have otherwise been able to. With our trucking experience, we can move items quickly, picking up items in the Northeast and delivering them in the Southeast with only a 2-5 day fill time. In addition, this benefits distribution Partners, enabling those receiving Sommer Maid dairy items in the Southeast to have a wide selection of goods available in the same truckload, resulting in more product availability for end users. 

Leading Foodservice Redistributor Honor Foods acquired R.W. Zant.

In 2022, Honor Foods, a Burris Logistics company, acquired R.W. Zant in Los Angeles. R.W. Zant specializes in protein. This was a huge addition to the Honor Foods portfolio because it expanded service to the West Coast and brought the knowledge of working with protein to the organization. 

R.W. Zant has category managers with deep market and product knowledge in all major proteins. They have an experienced sales Team for product cuttings and presentations at the food distributor and the end-user level. R.W. Zant is known for superior customer service, has strong partnerships with customers and suppliers, and is open 24 hours Monday-Friday for will-call service with no minimums. R.W. Zant has drop-ship capabilities and delivers to the greater LA area. R.W. Zant also has two USDA further processing facilities with private-label, custom-cut capabilities, one for poultry and the second for beef, pork, and lamb. 

Honor Foods Acquired Sunny Morning, a Premier Provider of Dairy Products

In 2023, Honor Foods acquired Sunny Morning.  Sunny Morning has two locations in Florida, Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Sunny Morning was a family-owned-and-operated business for over 35 years. They are experts in dairy, especially eggs, butter, cheese, cultured, and customer ingredients. The Sunny Morning Team has an average tenure of 20 years and has dedicated account managers and personalized service. They offer a convenient delivery schedule with low minimums and short lead times. The Sunny Morning private label products are recognized for quality and reliabiłity, with export reach in over 40 countries.

The addition of Sunny Morning offers Honor Foods customers more dairy product offerings and an increased presence in the Southeast. With more frequent trucks traveling to the Southeast region, there is an increased opportunity for Honor Foods to help food vendors distribute non-dairy items in the area and increase the redistribution options to get products for distributors in the area. 

How Does the Growth of Honor Foods Benefit Food Vendors?

One of the largest areas of growth for Honor Foods as a foodservice redistributor over the past few years has been in the Southeast market, ranging from Florida to Texas to Louisiana and beyond. This growth has helped food vendors better reach food distributors and end users in an area with limited foodservice redistribution options. In turn, this helps food vendors reach new customers who may be asking for their product and just not have been logistically able to acquire them in the past. This also opens new opportunities for food vendors in the food distribution market, allowing them room to grow. In addition, it can help food vendors move products that may be warehoused in other parts of the country due to our logistics and trucking expertise. 

One of the greatest benefits of foodservice redistribution is its ability to reach smaller food distributors that can’t meet the product minimums needed to buy directly from food vendors, opening the food vendor up to new customer channels. The growth of Honor Foods not only brings this possibility to new areas but also offers new food distribution channels in one of the country’s highest-demand food service industry areas, the Northeast. The growth of Honor Foods means more trucking routes in more areas, resulting in shorter lead times, often as soon as next-day delivery.

In addition, the expansion of Honor Foods means more facility space. This, in turn, means an ability to carry a higher SKU count and order and store more product.

How Does the Growth of Honor Foods Benefit Food Distributors?

The growth of Honor Foods not only helps food vendors but also food distributors. By increasing our market area, we are able to have quicker lead times in a larger geographical area. This growth and expansion have also allowed us more space to add to our product catalog, increasing product variety and availability. In addition, we are able to offer an alternative to national redistribution in the Southeast, which has limited options in that segment of the supply chain. We are able to bring our product catalog consisting of over 300 vendors, giving food distributors new products to offer food service experts and greater product availability.

The Value of Trinity Logistics

Trinity Logistics, another Burris Logistics company, is a top ten leading freight brokerage company in the United States. Having a close relationship with the Trinity Logistics Team allows us to rely on their freight brokerage knowledge to move loads across the country in a time and cost-efficient way. This will enable us to help our food vendor Partners move products to locations they don’t typically reach and allow us to have a larger food distribution region that we can serve.

The Future of Honor Foods

In the last few years, Honor Foods has expanded its service area from 15 to 28 states. As a result, this has opened new doors for both our food vendor and food distributor Partners. As we look forward, we aim to continue to grow by focusing on integrating both Sommer Maid and Sunny Morning products and brands into the Honor Foods portfolio and strategy. In addition, we are focused on introducing our frozen portfolio of products into the Southeast, complementing the existing dairy business.  

Conclusion

Growing as a leading foodservice redistributor from a 15-state market area to a 28-state market area has allowed us to offer new food distribution channels to food vendors and a larger product catalog with shorter lead times to food distributors. We are offering an alternative to national foodservice redistribution in the southeast and diving deeper into the market in the northeast. As we continue to grow as a premier provider of frozen, refrigerated, dry, and dairy products, we strive to remain true to the core of who we are: a PARTNER that is flexible, helpful, focused on customer service, and dedicated to finding new ways to help your business grow.