Dive Brief:
- J&J Snack Foods opened its second self-owned cold storage facility in Woolwich, New Jersey, as the company looks to optimize distribution across the U.S. northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, according to a Jan. 22 emailed press release.
- The 212,000-square-foot facility can accommodate over 20,000 pallets of frozen food storage, including a portion for 700 pallets of Dippin’ Dots. The center also has capacity for 1,000 items such as Superpretzel, Icee, Luigi’s Real Italian Ice and more.
- A third facility in Arizona is “on track” to open in early 2024 as J&J Snack Foods aims to lower distribution costs, President and CEO Dan Fachner said in a Q4 earnings call.
Dive Insight:
Back in August, VP of Supply Chain Jay Montgomery told Supply Chain Dive that J&J Snack Foods had the majority of its stock shipping out of 3PL partners. Now, the food manufacturer aims to make progress on consolidating its multiple shipping and storage operations into fewer, yet larger, sites.
“We expect this initiative to provide at least $10 million in annual cost savings as we ramp up over the next two years," Fachner told analysts.
J&J Snack Foods opened its first self-owned storage facility in Terrell, Texas, which has now shipped over 3 million cases of food products.
Besides the upcoming Arizona facility, no additional facilities are planned at the moment, Montgomery said.
The CEO told analysts that outsourcing its logistics management to NFI is also “seeing efficiency improvements that are lowering shipping, handling and storage costs.”
J&J Snack Foods is also creating production efficiency and higher output metrics through automation and six added production lines for core products like pretzels, churros and frozen novelties.
