The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

WITH the Bahamas Food Services/Sysco deal moving forward, one Bahamian wholesaler yesterday expressed hope that Bahamian-owned suppliers could survive if the Texas-based distribution giant stuck to serving the hotel industry.

Patrick Treco, managing director of Continental Foods, told Tribune Business that if Sysco stuck to food distribution for hotels and restaurants, leaving the retail side to Bahamian wholesalers, they might survive.

The multi-billion US based conglomerate is involved in marketing and distributing food products to restaurants, hotels and inns, and other food service and hospitality businesses.

“As far as I’m concerned competition is good,” Mr Treco said. “Once there is a fair playing field I feel that we will survive.

“Sysco has been more on the food services side, hotels and restaurants, and not really in the retail business. Hopefully, if they keep that line, then we would be safe.

“I don’t know how they’re going to run their operation. The Prime Minister assured us that if there are any problems he has an open door. All I’m saying is I’m hoping for the best. There is nothing else we can do, business is business.

“I don’t think the Government can tell them who to sell to and what to sell. We assume they are going to continue to operate the way BFS is doing. We’re hoping that being such a big conglomerate everywhere in the world in food service, they would just gear up for Baha Mar, Atlantis and all the restaurants, and if they do that a lot of pressure would be off us because a lot of wholesalers are really not into food services,” added Mr Treco.

  “The deal has been done. There was really nothing the Government could do to block it, one foreign company selling to another.  The only thing the Government could do is put in place guidelines to help us or for them to work by. We don’t know what those are.” 

Prime Minister Perry Christie recently confirmed that the Government had decided to approve Bahamas Food Services’ (BFS) takeover by Sysco, promising his administration would ensure that Bahamian wholesalers were not “unduly impacted” by the sale.

The overriding fear of Bahamian wholesalers has been that if the BFS purchase is approved, Sysco, a US-based conglomerate with $39 billion in annual sales, could use its economies of scale and pricing power to undercut them and drive them out of the market, seizing all the business for itself.

Sysco had initially expressed interest in BFS back in 2004-2005. The initial deal, which was mulled under the first Christie administration, never came to fruition, partly because the Government was reluctant to grant approval for it in an industry supposedly reserved for 100 per cent Bahamian ownership only.