Food gifts merchant Edible Arrangements is thinking big. The Wallingford, CT-based company opened a new design and distribution center in April in Riverside, CA.
BerryDirect, which sources and manages the containers designed specifically for Edible Arrangements products, owns the new facility. Kamran Farid, cofounder/chief operating officer for Edible Arrangements, says that BerryDirect’s previous facility in Lake Elsinore, CA, was too small to meet existing and growing needs of the business.
“We increased efficiency by moving from three buildings to one, and increased capacity from 85,000 sq. ft. to 125,000 sq. ft.,” he says. “We relocated nearby so we could retain our existing workforce, and we added 10 new jobs.”
Annual sales have soared, Farid says, averaging about 20% per year topped off by 50% this past year due to the growth of the business and new product offerings. Edible Arrangements, which specializes in artistically designed fresh fruit arrangements, has 1,046 stores in 14 countries.
Farid says the new distribution center allows the retailer more room to stock inventory, “so we can provide faster service to our clientele.” What’s more, he notes, “we can stock three times the number of pallet locations using better racking systems that were designed for growth.”
And the new facility is more energy efficient, so Edible Arrangements is controlling energy usage and costs, Farid says, “which is good for our customers, too.”