McLane Co.

McLane Co. serves the industry with two divisions: Grocery and Foodservice.

McLane Grocery Distribution serves more than 70,000 retail locations, including convenience stores, mass market retailers, warehouse clubs, drug stores and more. McLane is a wholly owned unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Omaha, Neb.

In late 2021, McLane named Chris Smith president of McLane Grocery. Previously, he served as senior vice president and chief supply-chain officer at retail pharmacy company Walgreens Boots Alliance, Deerfield, Ill., and executive vice president and chief supply chain officer at grocery distributor C&S Wholesale, Keene, N.H. The company expects to leverage Smith’s experience and supply-chain expertise with those companies at McLane.

This year, the company has updated its Virtual Trade Show (VTS) mobile ordering application with a new look and feel with enhanced functionality, including the ability to set up staggered bundles, which allows users the flexibility to place orders for multiple stores with varied ship dates at one time.

And McLane highlighted its enhanced Delivery Tracker app, which now features multi-carrier SIM cards in devices to strengthen and broaden coverage and a new geolocation capability that, when merged with existing fleet management technology, provides more accurate tracking and delivery data to retailers.

McLane Kitchen offers the Central Eats foodservice platform, which provides prepackaged breakfast, lunch and dinner items available in refrigerated or heated and ready-to-eat form. The platform includes Choice Chicken, a full fried-chicken program with sides; Javaperks, a coffee and tea program; a bakery program through supplier Prairie City Bakery, Vernon Hills, Ill.; and Fly Guys Pizza, part of McLane’s private-label Customer Value Products (CVP) line.

McLane Foodservice Distribution serves a system of chain restaurants. Available services include Rapid Response for managing demand spikes and unforeseen supply-chain challenges, a series of logistics services, promotions management and online tools to simplify daily tasks such as reporting and invoicing.