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What's a fair price over cheese block to pay?

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Cicerospizzeriamv

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Hello everyone! Just finished doing some numbers from last year. We went through almost 15,000 lbs of Wisconsin mozzarella cheese this past year. I know that is just a drop in the bucket for most of you on here. We paid on average .4858 over block, my current vendor (Jacmar) states they can’t give me a set price over block, which I feel is BS. So my question is, what is a fair price over block for the volume of cheese that I do? Thanks for your time.
 
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This is a great question. I’m in the same boat as you and am actually considering switching because of their pricing. I haven’t spoken to anyone yet but I am going to do some price shopping for sure.

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I’m not sure if our numbers will corelate well with what you can negotiate with your distributor for as I’m part of a small franchise group. We pay 21 cents over the weekly block price of the week the cheese was ordered from the manufacturer. Our distributor orders full truckloads from the manufacturer for our franchise group.

One thing you might consider looking into is to see if there is any cost savings in purchasing a California made mozzarella due to lower shipping costs. Of course that would also be dependent on finding one with similar flavor and cooking characteristics as what you currently sell.
 
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20 cents over market is the standard rate for Sysco and US Foods. More specifically, you pay more based on the quality. There’s some bottom barrel cheese out there like Bellisimo that goes for 15 cents over market but it’s dogshit and full of starch. US Foods and Sysco have their own brands and they’re good. US Foods has Roseli and Sysco has Arezzio. Both go for the aforementioned 20 cents over market for block. However, if you go for the top of line stuff like Grande, you’re looking at 80-90 cents over market as Grande is the shit!

With that being said, cheese has jumped 10 cents this week over last week. Try to get in your orders today while they still have the old price for last week’s mozzarella. I just loaded up today!
 
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I hate to be the one to start the quarterly grande debate, but 90 cents over market… we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for some of us. Not in this lifetime, holmes.
 
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noreason said:
I hate to be the one to start the quarterly grande debate, but 90 cents over market… we are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for some of us. Not in this lifetime, holmes.
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Agreed. It’s very good but being a Chicago pizzeria, we use an enormous amount of mozz. I’d use Grande if I was a NY place and put very little cheese on pizzas and market it, but other than that scenario, I couldn’t pull the trigger either. Concord Foods btw always has a good price on their all-natural 100% mozzarella (meaning no starch added) and the brand is Rosario. Usually a few pennies more than the Roseli/Arezzio stuff from US Foods/Sysco, but better quality given the zero starch.
 
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If I thought that more than half our customers would like the pizza better if we used Grande I would be all ears. Several years ago we blind taste tested Grande along with two other cheeses using a bunch of customers who work in the area. It did not get any more votes for favorite than the other two choices. Case closed for us; no way I would pay that upcharge unless 20 people tried it blind and 15 out of 20 preferred it.
 
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I might be the minority here but I think grande is way overrated considering its price tag. I’ve tried it a few times and just wasn’t sold on it.

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I’m a grande user for 18 years now. I pay more, but the results are awesome and work for me.

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I use lite smoked Provolone in my mix and can never tell if my pricing on it is any good. …just paid 3.02 lb. Don’t know any1 using prov to compare to. I go through about 175lb wk. care to share their price on it?
 
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Dman said:
I use lite smoked Provolone in my mix and can never tell if my pricing on it is any good. …just paid 3.02 lb. Don’t know any1 using prov to compare to. I go through about 175lb wk. care to share their price on it?
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I go through about 50lbs of sliced smoked provolone and am pay $2.91/pound. It’s a pretty small item for me so I haven’t shopped around to see how reasonable the price is, but we are supposed to have a set markup from our distributor for all of our items
 
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I just asked them to give me their best price. It went from $3.02 to $2.45…hmmm. That’s gustimate of about .75 over block. ill take that and gotta make sure it doesn’t float up.
 
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Don’t look now but cheese block closed at $1.3850/lb today sharply down for $1.74/lb five weeks ago woo!
 
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So, what’s a decent price for shredded mozzarella these days? I’m at $2.75/lb currently. We actually use a blend, but it’s mostly mozzarella.
 
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Joe said:
$2.02 holy crap, what cheese/distributor are you using?
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LOL, a local Italian distributor called Battaglia. I play 2 local guys against each other they always have better prices that the national distributors. once in a while ill have a sysco or GFS guy come in and try to get my business and they cant touch my local guys. anyway, I use their name brand cheese it come straight from the great stare of Wisconsin and it is very good stuff. the other distributor I use, Greco and Sons, is at times a lill bit cheaper but its not as good as Battaglia moz. And just to twist the knife for some of you guys I don’t use all that much cheese; I hear some of yall go through 20 cases a week and I am very envious. Battaglia is only here in chicagoland, Greco has locations in Chicago, Wisconsin and Arizona.
 
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