Paul Hill speak to Tom Gittins and Jess Douglas, joint managing directors of The Wholesale Group
PH: What has been your most significant achievement over the past 12 months?
TG & JD: The Wholesale Group was formed on 1 January 2025, bringing together two groups with more than 90 years of wholesale experience.
Our most significant achievement is that, already, we have 257 wholesale members with a combined turnover of £4.52bn, accounting for 13.7% of the UK wholesale market.
Since inception, we have welcomed 15 new members who have chosen us having been previous members of other buying groups.
What is your unique selling point?
We are the home of independent wholesale and passionate about supporting independent family businesses, many of which have been in operation for multiple generations. We, too, are a family business, and we recognise what drives these businesses forward, with our shared vision and values at the heart of what we do.
The Wholesale Group is incredibly proud of its talented and highly experienced head-office team. Our collective expertise spans every aspect of wholesale, from buying to own brand, ensuring that our knowledge across the board is second to none.
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As a group, we are focused on service and underpinned by the latest technology. We use data to drive incremental growth with both our suppliers and members. Our focus on technology is demonstrated brilliantly by our Accelerate platform. This platform provides extraordinary value for members and suppliers, providing access to all our products, prices, specifications and promotions, saving them significant time and resource.
We also have a central distribution facility and geographical hubs, which support our smaller members. Through this data, we can see where products end up, and we work closely with suppliers to maximise their supply-chain efficiency. Every member gets a share of the profits, and the more turnover members put through the group and the more members engage with our head-office marketing campaigns, the higher proportion of profit they receive at the end of the year.
Pre-merger, we have grown profit share every year since 2020 and we are committed to supporting growth for all members. This support includes a packed promotional calendar, group events, a ready-to-use toolkit of sales resources and marketing materials, and our industry-leading digital magazine and website, Chef Insider.
What are your plans to help members over the next 12 months?
To satisfy demand for high-quality, professional products created specifically for the needs of chefs, caterers and industry kitchens, The Wholesale Group has created an own brand, Chef Assured. The range provides a core range of high-quality foodservice products for everyday use, supported by two sub-brands: Chef Prestige, a range of premium ingredients delivering exceptional taste and specification, and Chef Hygiene, providing cleaning, hygiene and janitorial solutions.
We will continue to lead from the front with our focus on using technology to support members and suppliers as we further develop our Accelerate, Data Insight and AI projects over the coming months.
In addition, we provide our members and supplier partners with a series of events where they can plan for the months and years ahead.
We have held three events so far in 2025, including our first trade show in March, which saw more than 100 supplier brands represented and 600 people in attendance.
Our foodservice fair takes place in September, and our annual conference is in October. All our events are free to members.
