BOSTON, Sept. 11, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ARCOP (Arby's Supply Chain Cooperative) announced its strategic partnership with TopSource LLC, a division of Topco Associates LLC, the largest cooperative buying organization for retail food in the United States. TopSource assists retail, wholesale and food service companies manage procurement costs across indirect products and services, including store equipment, hired services, logistics and distribution, IT/Telecom, HR benefits and more.
Located in Atlanta, Georgia, ARCOP is a leading supply chain cooperative for Arby's, a privately held fast food restaurant chain primarily known for its roast beef sandwiches. Arby's has approximately 3,500 restaurants in the United States and Canada of which about a third is company-owned and the remainder is franchised locations. In conjunction with supplier partners, ARCOP and TopSource believe significant opportunities exist to work together to add efficiencies to Arby's restaurant operations and purchasing decisions.
Les Karel, senior vice president, indirect sourcing and distribution management for ARCOP talks openly regarding the recent partnership with TopSource. "We researched several other sourcing companies as well as GPOs and TopSource provided the best breadth of products and services that overlap with food service companies. The TopSource team's expertise and years of experience in category management was impressive. With a lean indirect team at ARCOP, we look forward to working with TopSource to help us communicate new competitive program offerings more quickly to our entire membership. This opportunity is exciting to us especially to drive value and participation at our franchisee level."
Over the past two years, TopSource has successfully expanded its customer base to include not only grocery companies but also businesses such as convenient stores, drug stores, and restaurants. For ARCOP, the TopSource business model is a strong fit to support the need for quick service restaurants (QSR) to create greater efficiencies and control indirect expenses. "One of our key objectives is to manage costs through consolidated purchasing efficiencies. We want to maximize savings in specific areas and we are confident TopSource can provide this opportunity as we overlap in several procurement areas." stated Karel. "We are pleased to be working with a company that matches our vision in the consortium market."
John Latham, director, business development of TopSource looks forward to working with ARCOP as a new customer. In support of the new partnership, Latham said, "Like many of our current customers in the grocery retail, foodservice and wholesale space, ARCOP has many of the same strategic indirect sourcing needs that are at the very core of what TopSource does. We were able to introduce and demonstrate the competitive savings advantage that TopSource delivers to its customers on a daily basis. Together, we have already identified many areas that may make sense for the Arby's restaurants."
TopSource is working closely with ARCOP to deliver significant savings in several business areas by leveraging the purchasing power of its 60+ customers. Several initiatives are currently being evaluated.
About TopSource
TopSource is a wholly owned subsidiary of Topco Associates LLC, the largest cooperative buying organization in retail food. By applying a structured sourcing process and through spend aggregation, TopSource assists premier grocery, retail and wholesale companies realize significant savings in the area of Not-For-Resale (NFR), often called indirect spend. Across twelve NFR categories, TopSource has saved its customers an average of 13% on an annual basis in areas such as store equipment, office products, packaging, IT/Telecom, construction, logistics & distribution, marketing, health care, utilities and hired services. To learn more about TopSource, visit www.topsourcellc.com.
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