Creating One of the Nation’s Largest Independent Fresh Food Distributors
FreshEdge is one of the largest independent fresh food distributors in the United States, serving foodservice and retail customers across the country. The business sits at a critical intersection in the food supply chain, connecting hundreds of produce suppliers with thousands of retail and foodservice customers who depend on fresh, reliable delivery. What exists today as FreshEdge was built through years of deliberate platform construction, beginning with two strong but independently operated regional distributors.
Strong regional operators. A national platform waiting to be built.
When Rotunda first invested in the business in 2017, there were no super-regional, independent produce distributors. The market inherently requires local service, making the complexity of serving multiple regions inherently challenging. The business itself had been operating as two separate fresh food distributors, one focused on retail and one focused on foodservice. Each had earned a strong reputations in their markets but functioned independently, with limited coordination and no shared strategy. We saw the opportunity to build scale by combining multiple, regional produce distributors and unify the group under one platform. The opportunity wasn’t to fix what was broken. It was to connect what was working and build something bigger than the sum of its parts.
Fresh food distribution is a stable, non-cyclical business with growing customer demand for fresh and specialty products. The supply chain structure is inherently complex, and the logistics capabilities required to serve it well were difficult to replicate. FreshEdge had those capabilities. What it lacked was the unified platform to leverage them at scale across a fragmented customer base.
The challenge
Bringing together independent regional operators under one platform requires more than a common name. Governance, leadership, reporting, and culture all need to align without disrupting the local relationships and brand equity that made each business valuable in the first place.
The landscape
Fresh food distribution remained highly fragmented, with few scaled independent operators capable of serving national foodservice and retail customers across multiple categories. The opportunity to build a platform of genuine national significance was real, but it required capital, patience, and a disciplined acquisition and integration approach.
Building a platform from the inside out
We’re looking for founders ready to professionalize and scale—and we know you’re assessing fit, too. This means honest conversations about goals, capabilities, and what success looks like. When it aligns, our entire team commits alongside you. This includes our deal team led by two Rotunda partners, our value creation team, and operating executive network.
In 2019, Rotunda combined IF&P and Get Fresh Produce to form FreshEdge, bringing three heritage brands under one leadership structure for the first time. The unified entity enabled shared strategy, operational integration, and the development of a centralized growth engine while preserving the local brand strength each business had built over decades.
A growing multi-entity platform needs the back office to match. Rotunda helped FreshEdge build out its corporate function with key leadership hires across finance, operations, HR, and M&A integration. The reporting systems and organizational structure put in place gave leadership the visibility and capacity to manage a complex, expanding business.
FreshEdge grew beyond its produce roots into proteins, floral, dairy, grab-and-go, and specialty offerings. The sales team was strengthened, pricing strategy refined, and cross-sell efforts implemented across the network — deepening relationships with existing customers while opening doors to new ones across foodservice and retail.
Seven acquisitions across Tennessee, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and other high-priority regions expanded FreshEdge’s footprint into markets where the thesis was clear and the cultural fit was right. Each transaction followed a consistent integration framework that prioritized local brand strength, operational synergy, and the kind of cultural alignment that makes acquisitions actually work. The combined businesses could now serve national customers in a way they were never able to do as separate, regional distributors.
From a network of regional operators to a national platform
When Rotunda exited in 2022, FreshEdge had become one of the largest independent fresh food distributors in the country. What began as a collection of strong but siloed regional distributors became a unified, multi-category platform with the scale, infrastructure, and acquisition capabilities to compete at a national level. Seven acquisitions, one brand, and five years of deliberate platform construction produced an outcome that reflected the full potential of the original thesis.
“Through our partnership with Rotunda we have never strayed from our core value as a customer-obsessed distributor providing customized service to deliver the freshest product in market.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. The quoted statement reflects the opinion of a portfolio company executive and is not necessarily indicative of the experience of other portfolio companies. No compensation was provided for this testimonial, and there can be no assurance of future results.