JJ Foodservice ditches ‘disruptive cycle’ to win Grocer Gold 2026

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JJ Foodservice

Winner: JJ Foodservice

Founded in 1988 by CEO Mustafa Kiamil, a former restaurateur seeking better service and quality, JJ Foodservice began in a 3,000sq ft warehouse in North London. Today, it operates from 379,000 sq ft across 13 branches, employing 800 people and turning over £243.4m.

Despite a tough year for UK hospitality, JJ maintained a 99.3% availability rate and expanded its product range by 19%, adding Japanese, Mediterranean and Thai lines, alongside more than 70 new alcohol SKUs.

The standout move, though, was a shift in its promotional strategy. Rather than competing on weekly discounting, JJ looked to lower cost and complexity for customers. And so it launched Mix More Save More: a pricing model that rewards fewer, larger, consolidated orders with automatic per-case savings. Weekly sales grew from £310k to £810k year on year, business accounts more than doubled to 2,100 and customers now save an average of £300 a month.

Digital innovation also helped. JJ rolled out self-serve kiosks, the first in UK wholesale and which account for 9% of turnover. It also because the UK’s top-rated food and drink wholesaler on Trustpilot, lifting its score from 2.7 to 4.7 out of 544 reviews. New contract wins included a £3m deal with the North East Procurement Organisation and a £1.4m grocery contract with Leeds City Council.

Safety investment paid off too: AI-enabled vehicle cameras cut collision risk by 75% and distracted driving by 73%.

Judges were impressed with the discipline behind the growth. One called it “strategically confident and distinctive”, praising how JJ “identified consolidation, fragmentation and cost to serve as root problems” and build “a structural pricing and behavioural system, not a campaign”.