Services

Let Us Do the Heavy Lifting

Procurement and Category Management Support

From data-driven insights and planning to negotiations, insight cuttings, selection, and purchasing, IMA is both a partner and liaison. We manage more than 350 supplier programs and procurement for 5,500 EXCLUSIVE BRAND SKUs. We use our shared leverage to:

Get the right product at the right price. Our collective buying power helps drive sales through lower costs and improved terms.
Build relationships with leading suppliers. We use a strategic vetting and selection process to acquire the best, most reliable vendors.
Provide incremental category management resources. Distributor members have access to the brand strategy, insights, and metrics for over 17 EXCLUSIVE BRANDS.

Enhanced Marketing and Sales Support

Our distributor members have IMA experience and expertise to back them every step of the way. We provide a breadth of services for strategic brand planning and marketing executions that drive sales, promote education and training, and create consistency.

EXCLUSIVE BRAND Development

IMA is armed with the experience, perception, and openness that allows us to adeptly read and assess the current industry climate. Our deep network of strategic marketers and category experts leverages the most current research to develop, launch, and evolve EXCLUSIVE BRANDS that create success for our distributor members and their customers. With a solid grounding in today’s culture and a relentless drive to remain relevant well into the future, we lead our members with confidence through successful EXCLUSIVE BRANDS that become their point of differentiation.

Strategic Planning

Through our comprehensive business planning process, we leverage research and use data-driven insights to develop powerful strategic marketing plans that drive sales growth on priority brands and products.

Exclusive Brand Support

IMA supports distributor members with a robust collection of sales and marketing tools for our EXCLUSIVE BRAND portfolio. In-person and video trainings help boost category knowledge for sales teams; brand sell sheets, guides, social media content, and trade show booths help teams leverage the power of EXCLUSIVE BRANDS in market; our Integrated Digital Asset Management tool allows for member- and market-specific customization; and packaging speed to market drives efficiencies and quickly captures opportunities.

Networking Events

In addition to hosting National networking events virtually and in person throughout the year, distributor members are invited to attend National sales growth and innovation events. These events offer the opportunity to join forces with other industry leaders, meet key foodservice decision makers and influencers, and tap in to IMA resources and industry best practices.

Securing Quality and Innovation

IMA was founded with a commitment to building one of the industry’s strongest Quality Assurance programs to ensure the delivery of a high quality, safe, and consistent EXCLUSIVE BRAND portfolio to our distributor members and their customers. Today, our accomplished QA industry veterans engage in ongoing product collaboration and improvement measures that allow our customers to continually differentiate their business.

IMA QA ensures the quality of our 5,500 products as they diligently:

Review third-party manufacturing audits
Develop product and quality standards
Evaluate well-defined item specifications
Conduct organoleptic evaluations
Test products in a state-of-the-art cutting program
Oversee a comprehensive product recall program
Facilitate ServSafe^® programs

Multi-Unit Distribution

IMA represents comprehensive business plan support for multi-unit distribution. We leverage deep supply chain insights in reviewing product assortment and pricing to help members drive consistency and value for customers with multiple units. For any given category of a customer’s choosing, we provide subject matter expertise that drives supplier engagement and gets results.