Food distributor sales jump 50%

BONITA SPRINGS — Innovative Food Holdings, which provides gourmet foods to chefs and consumers, says quarterly sales rose 50% to nearly $8.8 million on the heels of an acquisition.

In August, Innovative Food acquired The Fresh Diet, which provides freshly prepared gourmet meals delivered daily to consumers in over 500 cities.

As a result of acquisition costs, Innovative Food reported a net loss of $614,000 on revenues of $8.8 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30. That compares with a net loss of $337,758 on sales of $5.8 million in the same quarter one year ago.

“We believe that the purchase of The Fresh Diet provides a unique opportunity to add a valuable, strategic, and operational asset to Innovative Food Holdings, including the ability to add an efficient, low-cost, last mile, direct-to-consumer platform to our business which is highly synergistic to our core specialty food offering,” says Sam Klepfish, the CEO of Innovative Food, in a statement.

“We further believe that this platform is highly scalable, with the ability to handle significant growth without extensive infrastructure investments and that the Fresh Diet platform substantially fills gaps within both the direct-to-consumer and foodservice food distribution system in the United States, giving us a comprehensive, efficient, source-to-table offering unmatched in the industry,” Klepfish says in the statement.