East London-based wholesaler Crowbond has acquired Hertfordshire-based fresh produce catering business Mike’s of Sawbridgeworth.
It is the fourth acquisition for the company this year. Since January, Crowbond has acquired the Fresh Produce Wholesale Company, Rayleigh Fruit N Veg, and Amwell Fruit Company.
The latest purchase would bring Crowbond’s annual turnover to over £25m, it said.
Crowbond MD Kerim Suavi said the deal was the company’s “biggest acquisition to date”. The 200-plus accounts onboarded over the past four weeks took the company to 1,000 active weekly accounts, he added.
“It made sense for us to take over Mike’s because they are in a region we already deliver in, and as someone we already traded with, we had a good relationship with them,” said Suavi.
“The new acquisition has also made our routes more efficient. We have merged all our routes in that area, and we have defined new areas for our drivers, meaning they are travelling less.”
Suavi said adopting an AI-powered ordering system allowed the wholesaler to keep growing without having to increase its workforce.
“As our business doubled, we’d have had to take the number of people doing that task to two or three. Instead, we managed to keep up the pace of growth with just one person working in order entry.”
“We wouldn’t have been able to grow as fast without doubling or tripling our number of people who do manual entry if we hadn’t automated that side of the business.”
The wholesaler adopted an automated ordering system powered by specialist management company Choco AI in July this year. The new tech allowed Crowbond to double its order entry capacity from 50 to 100 orders per day.
As a result of streamlining the company’s workforce with the use of automation, Suavi said he was “not fazed at all” about the new Labour budget delivered last month.
“I think a lot of people are concerned post-budget, and that’s leading them to lean into the wrong type of cost-cutting, starting with areas that affect customer experience directly.
“The area I think people should be investing is in their labour force where it is service-driven. What we’re trying to do at the moment is to take bums off seats, working on paperwork tasks, and divert that attention towards manual handling and customer service.”
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