Just opened my first shop in Chicagoland after relocating back this way from San Francisco. Maybe it’s because I’m a new shop and haven’t established a volume yet but so far cheese prices here are insane compared to California.
I’ve checked Battaglia, Greco, US Foods, and Sysco. All were +0.60/lb over market or higher for their name brand mozzarella. For example, US Foods has WM mozz under their brand Roseli for $2.66/lb and Grande (the so-called king of mozzarella) has WM mozz for $2.61/lb. In SF, it’s common the cheese prices would be around 0.20/lb over market across all distributors for their name brand mozzarella. With the market closing at $1.61/lb for block yesterday and around that the past several days of trading, the cheese prices should be around $1.81-1.85/lb.
Anyone else using a different distributor in Chicago area with better mozzarella prices?
last week I paid $1.71 a pound for battaglia moz…battaglia and greco seem to always be cheaper than the nation wide guys. with greco coming in just a bit more expensive than battaglia…greco is coming in at 1.89 this week.
Welcome back to Illinois, buddy. What’s the name of your shop? I’d like to follow on fb. I’m paying around $2.30 for Grande part skim mozz from Greco. We buy 12-15 cases a week and shop them weekly against GFS, so we likely get a solid deal.
Hey Patrick,
No I can’t make it this year. First one I’ve missed in years. Just opened up my new spot and it’s packed every night (150+ seats) so I’m likely a prisoner here until operations start running smooth as I ween myself out gradually.
Thanks for the response. I was using Greco and the service was great but switched over to Battaglia for most pizza supplies and still shop them against Sysco/US Foods. I have perfect credit but Greco will only do net/14 terms for some reason. My other 17 vendors are all set at net/30. Very odd. Just easier for me to do payments once a month. I’ve never had net/14 with any vendor in my 16 year career. Battaglia also will make my custom boxes for a good price and they’ll store them in their warehouse instead of forcing me to order 12 cases of each size! Who has room for that?!
You going to do a 2nd location or stick with one big boy? Think this is my last rodeo and kinda over multi-unit ops. Hope all is well amigo!
Try Performance/Roma. I have great credit and Greco gave me COD no terms! They even had the audacity to email me and congratulate me on getting C.O.D. I have 14 - 21 day terms with every other supplier.
I called their credit department and the reason they gave me is that I have too many inquiries. I told them no kidding I am opening a restaurant everyone under the sun is pulling a credit report. They are no longer majority owned by the Greco’s a hedge fund has taken control.
Now in Chicago Panos Foods is trying to Branch out big time. The salesman has come in but I did not get a chance to sit down with him to get prices. A few friends of mine that own different concepts tell me their pricing is great. Hopefully this helps out best of luck with the new restaurant.