Flanagan Food Service: A Feast On® Certified Ontario Distributor

What started as a retail store for food products in the Waterloo Region back in 1977 has since grown into a full-on food distribution service for restaurants across Ontario.

Discover the Story of Flanagan Foodservice

Read the story and learn more about our Feast On® certified friends at Flanagan Food Service.

The History of Flanagan Food Service

In 1977, Joe and Dee Flanagan opened Bob’s Surplus Food Outlet in Waterloo. This retail store carried around 500 products and had 3 employees.

Not long after, Joe realized that the business could scale quickly and began distributing food products to local bakeries and donut shops in the area right out of their family station wagon.

As this was going on, Joe had a bit of a lightbulb moment: distribution was the missing link for a lot of restaurants. There was a desire to source high-quality ingredients but sourcing it was tough for chefs.

Swapping over to full-on distribution services by the 80s, Joe’s sons joined the business and it was renamed Flanagan Food Service. From there, they were off the races! They moved to a larger space and opened up a second branch in Owen Sound for easier distribution to a wider catchment area.

You can read more about that history and how the business was transferred over to Joe’s sons in the subsequent years.

Today at Flannagan’s

Today, Flanagan Food Service has four branches, over 80 vehicles, 520 employees, and a whopping 8000+ customers! When local food is thrown into the mix, you can imagine the impact even one locally-sourced product would have on an audience that large. 

Luckily, there’s much more than 1 local product sourced by Flanagan Food Service and distributed province-wide. In fact, of Flanagan Food Service’s catalogue of products, over 500 are locally sourced from Ontario farmers and producers. This includes Ontario beef, loads of locally-grown produce, Ontario-made cheeses, and more.

Sustainability Plan

Flanagan Food Service has also committed to an in-depth sustainability approach involving strategic partners for sourcing responsible ingredients like Ocean Wise Seafood.

They source over 200,000kg of Ontario products annually which means a lower carbon footprint for travel. Their employees have contributed upwards of 540 paid volunteer hours to organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Speroway. All in all, they’re working on creating a greener and kinder planet.

Get In Touch with Flanagan Food Service

SO! Does this sound like a distributor you might like to work with? We love that. Head to their website to get in touch today.