Real-Life Math
A typical day for you as a food broker is usually spent meeting
with customers or prospective customers. With existing customers, you have
to check stock on the items they purchase from you and order as needed to
maintain their stock level. You also have to design and build displays from
the companies that you represent.
With prospective customers, you have
to present your product lines in a way that will persuade them to purchase
those products from you. Sometimes that means bringing product samples. And
sometimes that means using a presentation that will outline how they can save
money buying from you as opposed to buying from another food broker.
In
fact, you learned early on that even though sales skills are important, your
math skills are equally as important. You've found yourself having to
do everything from figuring food cost on a specific item to comparing the
current year and the previous year's products.
Today is no exception.
You'll be meeting with a prospective client over lunch. You know from
previous conversations that price is a major issue for him. So you decide
that along with some product samples, you'll bring examples of how he
can save money while gaining quality by using your products.
You plan
to take a cheesecake as one of the samples. You know that the one he uses
has 8 slices and costs him $10.43. Yours, which is an imported item of gourmet
quality, has 12 slices and will cost him about $13.07.
You're
also taking miniature spinach quiches, an appetizer. The company that the
buyer is purchasing from now sells them in a case of 36 at a cost of $12.37
per case. Yours have 48 in a case and will cost him $13.43 for
the case.
The last sample that you're taking is a marinated New
York steak. The prospective customer is currently getting 12 in a case for
$27.09 per case. You sell them in cases of 12 for $24.39.
You'd
like to show this customer how much he might save if he decided to purchase
those items through you. So you'll also need to average the savings from
all 3 of those products to determine what his savings might be on all of them.
Barbara
Johnson is a food broker. She says that the math used by a food broker "is
pretty basic -- food costs, percentages, operating margins, comparisons between
this year and last. It's nothing that someone can't learn."