Greetings from Long Island – A visit with NCD and Marty Glick
Last week NJGCA traveled to Long Island for a unique business outing. Our board member Marty Glick invited us to tour the National Convenience Distributors (NCD) distribution facility in Farmingdale, New York.
As you know, NCD (and its predecessor entity, Harold Levinson Associates (HLA)) have been trusted Member Benefit Partners (MBPs) for years and a loyal ally to our convenience store members. The invitation was part site-seeing mission, part educational opportunity to learn how NCD can better serve our members — and even teach them a few new tricks.
During the tour we observed NCD’s daily operations, heard about unique obstacles they face in servicing retail accounts in the marketplace, learned how the industry is changing – and even participated in a test kitchen sample tasting (more on that next week).
NCD distributes just about everything a retailer might need – or want – to provide their patrons. The number of products is dizzying! They store and ship tobacco products, premium cigars, prepared food, coffee, paper products, ice cream, snacks, vaping products, confectionaries, and any number of ancillary items. To say it was impressive would be an understatement.
We were there for hours; touring the facility and asking questions. Here are some of the highlights:
- The one facility on Long Island employs 425 people, and covers over 500,000 square feet of inventory and shipping operations.
- Farmingdale distributes premium cigars, tobacco products, candy/confections, cold and frozen foods, fresh foods, shelf-stable products, and more.
- This one location distributes 170,000 cartons of cigarettes a week to convenience stores around the Tri-State area. NCD as a whole (with other distribution centers included) ships approximately 500,000 cartons throughout the East Coast. Cigarette sales are so robust that the Farmingdale facility typically only has a few weeks worth of inventory on hand at any one time.
- NCD features a walk-in humidor with over 4,000 square feet of premium cigar inventory, from brands like Macanudo, Cohiba, Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Partagas, Camacho, and more.
- The facility has approximately 45 to 60 days of overall product supply on hand at any one time, with over 20,000 individual SKUs inventoried in Farmingdale and processed electronically.
- Shipping is done through local (smaller) trucks within the immediate area, and larger (tractor trailer) trucks for the rest of the Tri-State area. Larger tractor trailers will be sent to sub-distribution centers in South Jersey, Connecticut, and other locations, where larger trucks will be broken down and transported locally through smaller delivery routes (mostly in North Jersey, Long Island, and New York City). Dozens of trucks and tractor trailers are packed and shipped daily, servicing customers all over the East Coast.
- Walk-in cold inventory storage is massive, and ranges from a 40 degree cooler (fruit, fresh sandwiches, dairy products, etc), to a 0 degree freezer (frozen foods, prepared foods, specific baked goods, ice cream, etc.), to a -20 deep freezer (for bulk items, certain types of meat/proteins, etc).
- While NCD carries any number of national brands, they also own a series of proprietary in-house brands for customers to sell to patrons, including Rachael’s Hand Crafted, Mighty Chicken, Island Coffee, Craft House Bakery, MyPie, Uncle Ed’s Pantry, and more.
Keep in mind that NCD is more than just that one location. The Farmingdale distribution facility was the former epicenter of HLA’s standalone operations; and impressive all on its own. However, as a consolidated entity, NCD has similarly situated facilities in Philadelphia, Maryland, Florida, and Massachusetts. They serve customers all over the East Coast, including New England, the Tri-State area, Delaware Valley, Mid-Atlantic region, South Carolina, and Florida.
While the logistics are impressive, so is the regulatory scheme that NCD must abide by in distributing products to customers. For one, FDA regulations state that NCD must keep track of products all along the supply chain. From inventory shelves/refrigerators/freezers to the retail stores, it must all be accounted for. The reason to track and trace these products speaks to food safety and preventing foodborne illnesses throughout the logistics chain. What’s more, unlike some fly-by-night direct store delivery services, NCD must abide by these food safety/tracking rules as part of their ordinary operations.
Operations aside, we were also able to participate in a test kitchen sample tasting. Suffice to say that NCD’s team had any number of useful product and ideas to share with us. We’ll dig into it more next week, but the overarching theme demonstrates that small business owners can utilize NCD’s own knowledge base to offer customers something delicious and unique while adding profitable products to your establishment.
In the meantime, please review some of the snapshots we took from our facilities tour, and let us know if you have any questions or feedback for our colleagues at NCD.
NJGCA Board Members and staff visit NCD’s Long Island distribution center in Farmingdale, New York. Pictured are Board President Ebbie Ashabi, Board Members Marty Glick, Levent Sertbas, and Harjinder Kehal. NCD Executive Vice President of Government Affairs and General Manager Kyle Feldman, NJGCA Executive Director Eric Blomgren, and Director of Member Services Nick De Palma.
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NCD’s Farmingdale distribution facility boasts a 4,000-square foot walk-in humidor, with over $1 million premium cigar inventory at any time.
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NCD’s Farmingdale distribution center spans over 500,000 square feet, with a staff of 425 employees.
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The facility has over 20,000 SKUs in inventory.
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NCD relies on both workers and automation to fill orders. In this photo, bins are set up to allow employees to “pick” the merchandise into boxes for each customer, then use the roller conveyors to advance the order to the shipping department.
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Roller conveyors crisscross the distribution center, delivering packages filled with products to the loading dock for shipping to customers.
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Receiving dock, where products are unloaded and sorted into various parts of the distribution facility. NCD unloads dozens of trucks a day.
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The final leg of the process finds product moving to the shipping dock area, where trucks and tractor trailers are loaded. Depending on the where items are being shipped and total customer volume, an order may be stacked on a pallet and wrapped before shipping.
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