Victoria Gutierrez, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer, Sysco Corp.

When prominent food-service distributor Sysco Corp. decided to upgrade its online personalization features for customers, it didn’t take long for the benefits to roll in, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer Victoria Gutierrez said in a keynote presentation at EnvisionB2B in Chicago.

Guiterrez noted that Sysco supplies food products to “half of the restaurants in the United States” as well as to schools and other large customers, and set out three years ago to inject more personalization into its customers’ ecommerce experience. She added that digital operations now account for 80% of business with independent companies. Sysco reported $78.84 million in total sales for the fiscal year ended June 29, 2024.

At EnvisionB2B, Gutierrez spoke in a “fireside chat” keynote presentation with DC360 editorial director Brian Warmoth.

Sysco enhances online personalization

One way Sysco has enhanced personalization, Gutierrez said, is by using its market position. She noted that Sysco compiles and uses data on its sales to the restaurant industry to provide helpful product trends to restaurateurs and chefs based on the cuisine.

“We know everything they’ve ever bought [from Sysco]; we also have the attributes about size, their geography, their menu preferences,” Gutierrez said. “We take all that customer data, the 250,000 products they can buy and all the attributes … and our personalization algorithms help us really tailor the experience online.”

“If you’re a chef at an Italian restaurant, I want you to see different things when you search tomatoes versus if you’re the chef in a Mexican restaurant,” she said. “And because we have all that data — let’s say you are the chef at that Italian restaurant, I can tell you things that other Italian restaurants are buying that you aren’t buying from us.”

Sysco grows $450 million in incremental sales via digital

Within the first three years, Gutierrez noted, Sysco’s new online personalization features in digital commerce and marketing generated $450 million in incremental sales.

Gutierrez said Sysco’s digital commerce platform complements several critical strategies:

⦁ Understanding what customers do and want and making it easy to do business with Sysco.

⦁ Being a food-service industry “partner of choice” and making it easy for suppliers to do business with Sysco.

⦁ Help industry consultants understand Sysco’s strengths and add to its customer base.

⦁ Bringing the 24/7 capabilities to Sysco’s salesforce,  providing customers the full range of sales and service ,options they require.

Victoria Gutierrez, senior vice president and chief merchandising officer, joins DC360 editorial director Brian Warmoth to discuss Sysco’s digital commerce strategy at EnvisionB2B in Chicago this week.

“Two big things for our customers that really, really changed — we were all of a sudden giving them a ton of information they didn’t have access to before,” Gutierrez said. “They can go online and just grab all of the attributes about an item.”

“And then the second one was predictability,” she added. “If they’re putting in their own order … they can track what they’re actually getting and when it will show up.”

Sysco scores with new sustainable product assortment

She noted that Sysco has also used its digital presence and expertise to introduce new product lines.

“We launched our sustainable assortment last year — 3,500 items that have sustainability certifications — and those items are some of the fastest-growing items in our entire assortment, because customers are looking for them to put online … and figure out how they can menu that and tell their customers about it.”

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].

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