So, you’ve thought about selling your food or beverage product to the healthcare industry. Driving past your local mega-hospital, maybe you’ve thought ‘Hey, those are big buildings with lots of people in them. I wonder if they would buy my new food product?’
Or, ‘What do all the doctors, nurses, and medical technicians, not to mention patients and visitors, eat? Are they all brown-bagging it?’ The answer is basically no, for the most part, they aren’t.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities, like nursing homes, provide cafeterias and other retail outlets for visitors and employees, as well as nutrition services for patients. Both aspects are managed by the same food and nutrition team; typically a director of food and nutrition, dieticians, chefs, and other staff.
As in other foodservice sectors like colleges (read more about the college foodservice market here), the quality of the food service in a healthcare facility is an important part of their guest’s and employees’ experience and is taken very seriously. These foodservice teams are constantly looking for new ideas and new food products to enhance their offerings.
Here’s a Quick Overview of the Healthcare Foodservice Industry
There are 60,000 healthcare institutions in the U.S.; ranging from urban mega-hospitals to smaller local hospitals and nursing homes.
How it Breaks Down:
▸Hospitals: 8,000+
▸Centers for Rehabilitation: 2,800+
▸Retirement & nursing homes: 38,700+
▸Nursing homes: 20,000+
▸Assisted living: 9,600+
▸Senior living: 9,000+
▸Other healthcare: 11,000+
(source: CHD-Expert)
A large hospital can have as many as 5,000 employees, as well as thousands of daily visitors and several hundred patients. So, these can be very large operationswith thousan ds of meals served.
How the Industry is Structured
The team who runs the food service, as mentioned above, are the director of food and nutrition, dieticians, executive chefs, and their foodservice staff. These are known as operators.
For a large part of the industry, this team is employed by the hospital; these are known as ‘self-operated’.
But in some cases, the foodservice team is working for an outside company called a contract management company. The largest three of these companies are Sodexo, Aramark and Compass Group. These foodservice contract management companies also run in other sectors such as colleges and corporate dining (read more about these other foodservice industry sectors here). About 70% of healthcare foodservice is self-operated, the remaining 30% are contract-managed. If you are wondering which type of operator is easier to sell your food or beverage product to, check out our post that speaks to that, here.
In addition to the operators on site, the foodservice distributors who supply their operations are also critical. For the operator to buy your food product it usually has to be ‘in-distribution,’ meaning it is being carried by these foodservice distributors.
The largest of these wholesale distributors are U.S. Foods and Sysco. Learn more about wholesale foodservice distributors here.
How to Sell to the Industry
The main industry organization for the self-operated part of healthcare foodservice is the Association of Healthcare Foodservice (AHF), which is a non-profit, industry-managed association. The AHF holds an annual national conference and tradeshow and also has regional chapters and meetings. Attending and exhibiting at AHF events is an important way to market to the self-operated side of the industry.
Getting your product into wholesalers like U.S. Foods’ supply chains can be challenging – check out our eBook on this. Our consulting and marketing services can help with this, too, contact us here.
Conclusion
The healthcare industry is a very large and stable part of our economy, that will never go away. The foodservice aspect of healthcare is equally large and stable. So, if you think your food/beverage product could be a part of this industry, it is well worth taking a look at and beginning your journey to market to this important channel.
