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Mastering food costs and plate margins requires more than culinary skill; it demands fluency in the language of the wholesale supply chain. When a broadline sales rep quotes a price, or an invoice looks inflated, knowing these terms allows you to protect your bottom line.
1. Sourcing & Financial Jargon
Understanding these terms helps you audit invoices and negotiate pricing structures rather than simply accepting whatever price your distributor sets.
FOB (Free on Board): The price of the produce at its original shipping point (e.g., "FOB Nogales" or "FOB Yuma") before freight, cooling fees, brokerage fees, or distributor markups are added. It is the baseline agricultural cost of the food.
Delivered Price (Landed Price): The final price you pay per case at your kitchen door. This includes the base FOB price plus freight charges, fuel surcharges, and the distributor’s margin. Always ask your rep for the breakdown if your landed price spikes.
Spot Market: The daily fluctuating market price driven by immediate supply, demand, weather, and diesel fuel costs. If you buy on the spot market, your costs can double overnight due to a freeze or a transit strike.
Contract Pricing: A fixed rate negotiated with a distributor or local aggregator for a set period (e.g., locking in romaine lettuce at $22 a case for six months). This shields your menu costs from market volatility, though you might miss out on savings if spot market prices plummet.
Catch Weight: When a product is ordered by the case but billed by the exact weight of that specific box. Natural variations occur in items like winter squash, melons, or root vegetables, so you pay for the exact poundage you receive rather than a flat case rate.
Tie-High (Ti-Hi): Relevant for large-volume buying. It refers to how many cases make up a single layer on a shipping pallet (the "Tie") and how many layers high the pallet is stacked (the "High").
Short-Ship: When a distributor runs out of an inventory item and fails to load it onto your delivery truck, leaving your kitchen short.
Sub (Substitution): A replacement product sent in place of a shorted item. Beware of subs; distributors will often send a different brand, size, or grade without warning, which can throw off your portion yields and food costs.
2. Sizing & Packaging Math
Wholesale produce is rarely ordered by the pound; it is ordered by the case, flat, or count. Understanding these codes prevents you from ordering the wrong size product.
Count (e.g., 48-ct, 88-ct): This indicates how many individual pieces of produce fit into a standard wholesale case. The lower the count, the larger the produce.
Example: A 48-count box of avocados contains large, premium fruit (ideal for slicing onto a burger). An 84-count box contains much smaller avocados. If you are making guacamole, buying the cheaper, higher-count (smaller) box yields the same pulp volume for a fraction of the cost.
Tare Weight: The weight of the empty box, lug, or packaging. When you buy produce by the pound (like a 50lb sack of onions), ensuring the tare weight is deducted means you aren't paying per-pound onion prices for heavy cardboard.
Flat: A shallow, single-layer box used primarily for delicate, easily bruised items like berries, figs, or heirloom tomatoes.
Lug: A shallow, stackable wooden or cardboard box with no lid, designed to protect heavy but fragile items like grapes, stone fruits, or vine-ripened tomatoes from crushing.
Carton (or Case): The standard deep cardboard box used for heavy commodities like citrus, apples, or root vegetables.
RPC (Reusable Plastic Container): Standardized, collapsible plastic crates used by growers to ship produce directly to distributors. They reduce cardboard waste and prevent fragile crops from being crushed in transit.
IQF (Individually Quick Frozen): Produce that is flash-frozen as individual pieces rather than in a solid block. Buying IQF berries or peas allows you to pour out exactly what you need without thawing the whole case.
Cello-Packed: Produce packaged in clear cellophane bags (e.g., "Cello Carrots" or "Cello Spinach"). It retains moisture but can also accelerate rot if your walk-in temperature fluctuates.
3. Quality, Grading, & Ripeness
USDA grades are based almost entirely on cosmetics—size, shape, and skin blemishes—not flavor or nutrition. Knowing when to use which grade keeps your food waste low and profits high.
U.S. Fancy / U.S. Extra Fancy: The highest premium grades for cosmetics, primarily used for fruits like apples and pears. These grades guarantee perfectly uniform color, shape, and crispness.
U.S. No. 1: Uniform shape, color, and size, with virtually no external blemishes.
Best for: Raw applications, garnishes, or plates where the vegetable is presented whole and visual appeal is critical.
U.S. No. 2: "Utility" grade. These items have odd shapes, skin scarring, or minor discoloration, but they are structurally sound with no rot. They are typically 20% to 40% cheaper than No. 1s.
Best for: Stocks, purees, soups, sauces, dicing, or any application where the original shape of the produce is lost.
Breaker Stage: Mainly used in tomato procurement. It refers to the exact moment a tomato's skin breaks from green to a yellow-pink hue. Shippers buy "breakers" because they are firm enough to survive transit and will ripen predictably by the time they reach your kitchen.
Pre-conditioned (Gassed): Fruit harvested rock-hard (like avocados, bananas, or pears) and placed in pressurized ripening rooms at the distributor's warehouse, where they are exposed to ethylene gas to trigger uniform ripening. Ordering pre-conditioned fruit means it is ready to use within 24 to 48 hours of delivery.
Hydro-cooled: Produce (like sweet corn or broccoli) that is drenched in ice water immediately after harvesting. This stops the "field heat" from overcooking or deteriorating the crop before it even gets on a truck.
Field-Packed: Produce cut and boxed directly in the field (common for head lettuce and broccoli). It is cheaper but arrives with dirt and field debris, requiring thorough washing and trimming.
Shed-Packed: Produce taken to a packing house to be washed, sorted, graded, and boxed. It is cleaner and has more uniform sizing but carries a premium price.
4. Yield, Waste, & Walk-In Management
Buying the right produce is only half the battle; managing it once it hits your dock is where profits are saved or lost.
Yield / Usable Yield: The percentage of the produce that is actually usable after trimming, peeling, or coring. A cheaper case of produce might have a terrible yield, making the actual "plate cost" much higher than if you had purchased a more expensive, better-trimmed case.
Shrink: The loss of inventory due to spoilage, dehydration, theft, or excessive trimming waste before the product can be sold. Managing produce shrink is one of a chef's top priorities for maintaining a healthy food cost.
Ethylene Producers vs. Ethylene Sensitive: While distributors use ethylene to ripen fruit (see Pre-conditioned), chefs must manage it in the walk-in. Apples, tomatoes, and melons produce high amounts of ethylene gas, which will prematurely rot ethylene-sensitive produce like leafy greens or fresh herbs if stored too closely together.
Cold Chain: The unbroken, temperature-controlled supply chain from the farm to your fridge. If a delivery of fragile greens arrives wilted, it's usually because the "cold chain was broken" (e.g., left on a hot loading dock for an hour before being put away).
FIFO (First In, First Out): The golden rule of produce rotation. The oldest product must always be rotated to the front of the shelf to be used first, ensuring nothing gets pushed to the back of the walk-in to rot.