After the manufacturing stage, three main actors distribute the food products through
the supply chain to the final consumers: wholesalers, foodservice businesses and retailers
(as seen in Fig. 1). As themain actors here are retail and foodservice, we specifically
focus on those two types of distribution systems. Eastham et al. (2001) distinguish
retail and foodservice from a consumer perspective, basically by referring to the consumption
location, which is, respectively, inside or outside a hospitality operation.
They acknowledge that this boundary is increasingly fuzzy, due to, e.g., the increase
of ready-to-eat meals sold in retailing and the establishment of restaurants within
retail stores. Regarding the whole chain, both industries are still quite different in
terms of, e.g., outlet dispersion, supply volumes and the use of technological systems
like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS).