Providing Customers Brand Name Sugar – Plus Market Insight

Jennifer Wilkes has worked as a salesperson in the foodservice industry for roughly 25 years. Her Rolodex is a robust, well-nurtured collection of distributors, brokers and national chain executives. Given her experience, it’s not hard for Wilkes to “get in the door” with customers. But in all her years of selling, she’s never had doors open so quickly as when she comes peddling sugar.

“The minute you step into the shoes of selling sugar, everyone wants to meet with you,” says Wilkes, the Southeast development manager for Imperial Sugar Company (ISC). “Not everyone wants to chat about a muffin. But everybody wants to talk sugar! Especially in the South, where we love our sweet tea.”

Her job is to sell sugar to a network of foodservice brokers, who sell to 105 foodservice distributors and redistributors who, in turn, sell to the foodservice industry in the Southeast. In addition, Wilkes takes care of 20 high-profile national accounts, such as Denny’s and Chick-fil-A.

The best part of selling Imperial Sugar’s products, though, isn’t the swiftly opening doors, she says. It’s the enthusiasm among customers over the company’s strong return to the marketplace now that its Port Wentworth refinery has ramped up production.

Jennifer Wilkes job will be to is to sell sugar to a network of foodservice brokers.

“The exciting part for me is reactivating accounts with old customers in the Southeast, and being able to say: ‘Hey, we’re up and running, and we have sugar ready to sell you!’ Many of them, quite honestly, have been wanting to buy our product as soon as we were ready for production again. They missed us.”

Today, Wilkes is able to meet customers’ demands with the Port Wentworth refinery providing a steady supply of white, brown and powdered sugars.

She’s helped by the fact that Imperial Sugar’s Dixie Crystals are one of the top-selling branded sugars in the Southeast. The company has the added distinction of being well-known and respected in the region. “Our customers are happy to start purchasing sugar again that lots of consumers in the Southeast want to buy.”

Because she has past experience working for brokers and distributors, Wilkes is able to put herself in customers’ shoes and bring more value to their relationships. “I understand what the broker needs from me, what the distributor needs from the broker, and how to manage all that so we can all be successful.”

Beyond providing customers with quality products and good deals, Wilkes also brings something else to the table – ISC’s insight into the global sugar marketplace.

“They want to know what the sugar markets are doing, or what’s happening with the pricing of raw sugar cane,” she says. “The sales team takes its cues from Patrick Henneberry,” who is Imperial Sugar’s senior vice president and chief of commodities management. “We’ll say: ‘Based on our insight, we speculate that this is what might happen next.’ I just did that with customers five times this morning!”

Wilkes sees her role as being a valuable, credible source of information for customers. “I talk to them by phone, visit them in person and for many of them, I send out weekly sugar market charts and monthly commodity updates. Because sugar is such a high-volume purchase, I can help turn somebody into a really good, educated buyer of sugar – if they want to learn. I can help make them successful.”