Grease - you are making the very same mistake that Sam made when he bought FD. He assumed they were in the food business. They were not. They were in the lifestyle marketing business, a business neither Sam nor almost anyone at FD knew much about. They just happened to sell food. That's why the company was destined for fail from the start.
As for food brokerage, it is a business of two tales. If I take 3 food brokerage companies and put them under one corporate umbrella, I can make money in multiple ways. Let's assume one works on a chef to chef basis (B2B). Another works on a B2C basis, and a third works maybe on an institutional sales basis. The company can make money selling through any or all three channels. I would hope that someone selling in these core business channels has figured out how to be profitable.
Now our little business buys something like iGourmet. It sells something to someone, and loses money doing it, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that they have customers and warehouse space. So we take the three other business lines and we set them up in the new warehouse space selling to the customer base we just acquired. Additionally, we now have a base of operations from which to distribute product from to others. Lower transport costs. Faster delivery.
In short, it doesn't matter what iGourmet does or did. As long as their facility can hold more product and the customer base is compatible with the existing customer base, it can be made to work. The only trick is properly pricing the business when you buy it. I trust Sam to price something, even if I do not trust him to do a proper business evaluation. When it came to FD, I believe he completely misunderstood what he was buying. When it comes to any other food broker, it really doesn't matter as long as the facility and customer base are good.
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