SAN FRANCISCO – GrubMarket announced it has completed the acquisition of Union City-based Daylight Foods, one of California’s largest foodservice companies, which provides produce, dairy, specialty items, dry goods and more to a wide range of business customers, including restaurants, large grocery and retail chains, corporate offices and cafeterias, hotels and universities.
Founded nearly 50 years ago as a small San Jose Farmers Market by original owner Bob Vlahopouliotis, Daylight Foods is now run by Bob’s son, Chris Vlahopouliotis, who became president of the company in 2003. Today, Daylight Foods is a full-service food wholesale and delivery business with a warehouse over 100,000 square feet in size that includes processing rooms, state-of-the-art coolers, repacking areas and loading docks. Daylight Foods is also committed to sustainability. In addition to conventional items, it sources seasonal, organic and locally grown produce and deploys eco-friendly hybrid diesel-electric delivery trucks. In 2021, Daylight Foods packed and delivered several million USDA Farmers to Families food boxes to households and homeless shelters across the San Francisco Bay Area. After the acquisition, the business will continue to be managed by its current experienced and mission-driven leadership team.
“We are excited to join the GrubMarket team and welcome the opportunities brought forth by joining GrubMarket. With GrubMarket’s robust technology platform and strong eCommerce supply and demand network, we will continue to be Northern California’s premier food service provider. We are thrilled to learn that GrubMarket shares our long-term goals and has built out such a well-integrated and much-needed eCommerce and technology-enabled platform to bring fresh food to so many people across the country. We sincerely look forward to joining the GrubMarket team and bringing more premium and farmer-direct fresh food to our customers,” said Chris Vlahopouliotis, CEO of Daylight Foods.
According to Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket: “Daylight Foods’ reputation in California’s farmer-direct food supply chain ecosystem is unmatched. It has been incredible to see how the business has grown with over 50 years of hard work and passion. Chris and the outstanding team at Daylight Foods have scaled the company to hundreds of millions in sales with high gross margins and profitability. In addition, they are mission-driven with strong ESG practices around food waste and carbon footprint reduction, which aligns with our sustainability goals. This acquisition enables GrubMarket to further strengthen our customer base across the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California. We are excited to welcome the Daylight Foods team to the GrubMarket family.”
As a part of GrubMarket’s portfolio, Daylight Foods will now utilize GrubMarket’s innovative and proprietary WholesaleWare software suite, the company’s software-as-a-service platform that provides food industry wholesalers and distributors with seamless financial management, easy-to-use sales and online ordering features, precise inventory management, lot traceability and tracking, grower accounting, and automated routing and logistics tools.
About GrubMarket
Founded in 2014, GrubMarket is a San Francisco-based food technology company operating in the space of food supply chain eCommerce for both business customers and end consumers, as well as providing related software-as-a-service solutions to digitally transform the American and global food supply chain. Currently, GrubMarket operates in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and British Columbia (Canada), with plans to expand to the rest of the U.S., Canada, and other parts of the world.
