Performance Food Group Company (PFGC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining our presentation. Just as a reminder, our remarks today could contain forward-looking statements. Please review the cautionary forward-looking statements section and our SEC filings for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements and projections. With that, I'll turn it over to John Heinbockel. John?

Thanks, Bill, and I'm happy to do our next session here. It would be quite an understatement to say that a lot has changed since ICR at this time last year. But we are getting closer, right, to a recovery in the overall economy. And it would appear in terms of foodservice consumption as well. And performance has done well in the context of that environment. So we have with us today CEO, George Holm; CFO, Jim Hope, and you just heard from Bill. We're going to divide this session, hopefully, into a couple of pieces, starting with a fireside chat, which will run maybe about 30 minutes, 35 minutes or so. And then would be terrific to have some incoming Q&A. You can send that to us through the normal channel that we've been using for this conference. And hopefully, that will take us the remaining 20 or 25 minutes, and that will be our session today.

So let me start, maybe, George, as we get closer here, right, to cycling COVID, the sales force has always been, I think, one of the great differentiators for you, size, quality, training, culture. Maybe talk about where we sit today, right, with the size of the sales force productivity. And then your thoughts, right, as we go into recovery mode, how you want to expand that, both legacy performance and Reinhart?

Well, when we went into the shelter in place, we reduced the sales force slightly, but it was just people that were with us less than 90 days, we furloughed. And we have brought many of those back, some we did not bring back. So we're sitting with slightly less salespeople today in Performance Foodservice and about the same in Reinhart as we had at the time. And I don't see anything changing for us when things come back, except getting back to some normalcy. I'd still see us growing our sales force being very opportunistic where there's good people available. I think they did a stellar job for us as we went into shelter in place. And they were great at continuing the contact with customer phone when it had to be phone in-person when they were able to do it safely in-person. And I see as just going back to that same rhythm that we were in.

Because I think pre-COVID, right, the model, I think, right, was 3% to 4% annual growth, roughly, and that in theory, that growth would contribute 1.5 points, right, to case growth or at least independent case growth. Has COVID changed any of that. Yes?

A little bit. Right now, we're running average sales per salesperson, the highest we've ever run, which we did not expect. We're also running highest sales per customer that we've had. And that tells me that we can be probably more productive than we've been with our existing people. But it won't slow us down as far as hiring people goes. I think we'll be a little bit more conscious around the kind of the quality and the experience of the people and more opportunistic and less trying to hit some certain number.

How do you guys -- you talk about the sales force being more productive than they've ever been. Now how do you think about their capacity, right? And what's the right level of capacity and when you start bumping up against then maybe hitting a ceiling?

Well, one of the reasons that we have the higher average salesperson is that we did disburse some sales. I mean we furloughed some people. And we found out putting -- even in a COVID environment, putting a real experienced person into that account versus it being somebody that's been with us less than 90 days. We improved our position in those accounts. So that -- we learned a lot from that. And I think that moving forward, we should be able to continue to increase the sales that we have per person. I mean, the days where we used to grow at twice the rate that we added people, I don't think those days are coming back, but I think we'll continue to do it well.

And how is the quality of sales force -- available salesperson look compared to maybe pre-COVID? Is -- I would imagine there's a lot of quality people at subscale distributors who might be available and might be more comfortable, right, in a larger organization potentially?

Yes. The quality of the people have been very good. We -- like anybody, we still struggle with hiring people without experience and getting them to do well. One of the things that we've done going through the COVID too is that so much of our product training, we've been able to get online and virtual and use it more than once. And our people have gotten pretty effective with it. So I don't think we're going to need to pull them out of what they do for living, for training as much as we used to because we're going to be able to do a lot of that online.

Sort of transitioning. When you think about now growth post-COVID and the 2 opportunities, right, so new accounts and existing account penetration, right? So maybe look at both of those, where is the opportunity, the greatest of those 2? Yes.

Well -- that's a good question. I mean our lifeblood in this business has always been new accounts because there's quite a turnover. I mean a lot of people don't make it. We -- in a reduced volume environment, we're able to increase our average sales per customer. And I think a lot of that was the people are using less distributors than before. Many or part of that may be a reflection to volume. And we're an interesting industry. I mean, when they don't have the same salesperson, sometimes what they'll do is go to that person they have the second best relationship with or the person that has always been around, but they had a primary that was more important to them. And that's created a lot of opportunity for us. So I think as we go back into a normal environment, that we'll go back to that new account being our lifeblood. But we're always trying to penetrate the account as well as we can. But the lifeblood is new accounts.

And I think, I mean, your structure has been -- some people have, right, sort of business managers that are looking specifically for new accounts. Yes, I think for the most part, right, you've done most of your prospects with the existing sales force. Is that fair? And is that a structure that likely continues going forward?

Yes. We have companies that don't have anybody that searches for new business. And we have companies that have multiple, what they call, a business development manager. So I think a lot of it is where that sales force is at level of maturity. So I don't think you can throw a blanket over our OpCos and say they all do it at a certain way. We do both, but more so the existing salesperson getting that business. A lot of times you go out, you get an account, if you're a business development person. And they're buying from you because they like something in your skillset or they like you personally or whatever the reason. And you can't just insert another person. So it's always much better when that salesperson has the pride of ownership, and they went out and they got the business, and it was their skills and their relationship that was able to get it done.

So you mentioned a little more existing account consolidation, right, lately. So maybe talk about that because that always struck me, right, that it was far too dispersed in a lot of accounts, right? When you think about specialty suppliers and then having a couple of extra broadliners, there's an economic -- you would think, an economic incentive to consolidate some of that share. Is that now finally happening?

Yes. I would say it happened going through this period of time. Now as to whether or not that will continue, I really can't say. Obviously, we would like to see that continue, particularly as our SKU base has gotten bigger, and we're more capable of being close to a sole supplier to a customer. I think logic would tell me that if they've got comfortable with less people, and they know they can count on them, I think they're going to stay with less suppliers.

And one of the challenges, right, for all of you, was on the specialty side, maybe center of the plate and in produce, that there was a halo effect, right, that the specialists had in terms of quality. Now do you -- is that also changing where accounts are more willing to look at your center of the plate versus a specialist that they might not have done in the past?

That's an interesting thing to bring up. Our companies that are just specialty, we don't have a lot. They've suffered the most. And center of the plate, we've done really well going through this. I think people are more comfortable. And if we perceive, say, as a broadliner, I think people are more comfortable putting their center of the plate with the same person that, that they're buying traditional groceries from.

The -- wanted to know you maybe transitioned a little bit to Reinhart, in particular, right? So Reinhart happens just prior to COVID, although Reinhart's performance looks like it's actually been very good, even without a ton of synergy. Where are we kind of broadly with the Reinhart integration, sales force, product, IT, et cetera?

Well, I'll speak to the sales force, and then I'll turn it over to Jim to speak to some of the other areas. I'll preface it with, we're extremely pleased with the acquisition. No surprises. The person who runs each one of those distribution centers is the same person the day we closed. The sales force is -- we've got our whole sales force on the same compensation system. We were able to do that very quickly. Very well-run company, didn't have a -- the ability to grow for whatever reason, and they're doing really well. We got ways to go from a product standpoint, but we like a lot of the things they're doing from a product standpoint. And we haven't rationalized any distribution centers and don't see ourselves doing that in the near future. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim. He can give you a much better feel around the synergies.

Yes. Thanks, George. So that Reinhart acquisition all-in was a really, really good and successful acquisition for us. And when you think about all the things that are important in acquisition, one of the first ones is the cultural fit and the shape or the design of the organizational structure. And both of those were really good fits and dovetailed right into PFG. They are, to a degree, relatively decentralized with good centralization on back-office activities that are farther away from the customer. And their leadership style and the culture across the organization was exactly like ours, so much like ours. So we're really happy that we're able to keep the majority of the leadership in place, and they've continued to thrive in our organization. There's been a lot of good best practice process sharing. They were a good process and disciplined company, just like we are. So the 2 companies sit form together. And I challenge anybody on any given day to try to see a distinct difference between the 2 as it's really becoming 1 big broadline organization. From a synergy perspective, certainly right on track, and the largest bucket of synergies or contribution was in the supplier procurement area, and all that supplier program harmonization has really gone well, and we've made considerable progress there. So we're very encouraged by what we see and pleased with what we see at the same time.

Maybe, George, you've done a lot of integrations. You haven't done -- obviously, you didn't -- you never done any in this type of environment, right, and culture, so forth? You -- so maybe how did you attack managing and enhancing the Reinhart culture in this environment? Was it a lot of Zoom because there's...

A lot of Zoom.

Nothing replaces being there in-person, but...

Well, I did some of that, too. So did Jim, carefully. But I've got to spend a good bit of time of them -- with them during the due diligence period, went around to every one of the distribution centers. And I knew a lot of them. I have worked with a lot of them in the past. So that helped. But there just weren't surprises. I mean we didn't surprise them with anything. They certainly didn't with us. It gave us time to really look close at their systems. It's been a weakness for us that we had so many different systems. They've been a big help on us. Given the customer want face, we work very hard on that, where we share customers. So that's been a big help. And we coexist extremely well. I mean there's a lot of overlap in territory. But when you got -- when you kind of got it together and everybody knows the ground rules and kind of how we operate it, it looks fine.

One of the opportunities at Reinhart, right, is -- have a good revenue base, reasonably profitable but generating top line growth, right, which was not quite the rate that you guys have had historically. Maybe talk to that because I think part of that was also going to be accelerating investment in their sales force? Where do you stand with that? And how quickly do you think post-COVID they can accelerate their top line performance?

Yes. We've been more in that staying stable type of environment, particularly with the pandemic we're dealing with. We have lapped. So we've got a couple of weeks with real good histories. And we're pleased. I mean, we get a look every month at how we're doing and how they're doing versus the rest of the industry. And we've kept it the reporting separately. And they certainly aren't performing at the level that the Performance Foodservice sales force is, but we didn't expect that early on, but continuous improvement. And I think we've probably got a few more months where we want to continue to see that, and then we'll get a little bit more aggressive with adding people on the Reinhart side.

And just last before we leave Reinhart. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like if you try to triangulate, right, from your September quarter that their profitability has actually held up really well somewhat surprisingly?

Extremely well.

What do you attribute that to?

Well, part of it is the synergies, that's been a help. Kind of hard to put our finger on exactly. No real loss of business, no loss of people. So as they started to get some traction and started to add accounts and started to get some things going, they didn't have stuff falling out of the bucket while they were throwing things in the bucket. So I think that's a lot of it as well. They've always been a company that was well run, looked close at expenses. We've had some margin improvement, which has been real rewarding, a little bit better than we expected there. And you just add all those things together, and it's been very helpful for us.

Well, one thing I want to do is go back a little bit. I know new accounts are going to be more critical for growth going forward but back sort of to existing account penetration. When you look at and sort of dissect that, and where the opportunity lies for you, right, is there a type of customer you do really well with Italian, right, I imagine your share of Italian's higher than some other cuisines. Is there a particular account type where there's a really big existing account opportunity? And what type of products? Is it really center of the plate?

Well, center of the plate is where we've done well, and we consider cheese to be center of the plate, too. And that's big for us. But I wouldn't say there's a specific type of accounts. Our legacy Roma companies, that's what they are. I mean, the bulk of their businesses is Pizza and Italian, and they've done real well, partly because we've always gained share in that part of our business and part because pizza travels well. It's good for pickup. It's good for delivery, but the delivery part of that, I'm sure it's helpful with third-party people, but that's pretty dominated by the big chains that we don't do business with. Hispanic has always been good for us too, oriented to cheese, and that's continued to do well. But our share gains have been every type of restaurant, literally every type of restaurant we've seen between very modest share gains and pretty substantial share gains.

When you -- one of the things you've done really well historically, right, is emerging businesses, emerging chains. Some of that's been Pizza, some of it's been quick casual. Where does that sit today? And as COVID sort of interrupted that, are we not going to see those emerging chains be as important as they were historically?

There's -- it's like there's no in between right now. People that were really dependent on indoor dining are suffering, no matter chain, emerging change independent. It doesn't matter. They're suffering. You've got to drive-through. If you're not doing well, it's because you were a chain that was in some type of decline that existed even without COVID. Also, not a lot of business has changed hands. When you get some of these people to do an RFP every certain amount of years, most of those are just continued with -- there's added another year done something like that. So not a lot of change there. I think that when things come back, I think the emerging chain will be just as important as they always were. You got to look at them close and try to get in early, make sure that you're treating them right. And as they get bigger, that they're being treated as a big account. And I think that's going to continue to be important. A lot of creativity out there.

Well, on that front, do you think ghost kitchens or how big is that going to be? Is that in and of itself an emerging channel that you think you can take disproportionate share in as it's been -- or is it not going to -- we all think it's going to be bigger, is it not going to be?

I don't know about disproportional share, that's kind of a tough one to call, but we're doing a lot of business that way. And it's typically very streamlined product offering, obviously, things that travel well. I think that's one of those things, probably here to stay. I think that will -- I think that nice boost for third-party delivery. I think there's a tipping point where it's got to work for everybody, including the restauranteur, and they got to make money, but they seem to be doing well. I think take-out it's going to go down certainly from these levels down a lot. But I think it will be higher than it was pre-COVID. That's one of the things I think I hope that will help our business grow. And we've got a lot of restauranteurs that have invested a lot of money in outdoor dining. And I think that, that's here to stay, too. There's going to be more outdoor dining. They're going to stretch out based on the weather, by heating or cooling, that's another thing that's going to be more than just a COVID fad. That's going to be around.

So transitioning to Vistar, right? And so you think about, you got a lot of channels, different share, different growth rates. So how do you think about managing the portfolio that is Vistar? Let's say -- and I know you purposely not taken resources out of that business because we think there's growth to come in the future but managing all of those channels and putting resources maybe towards some as opposed to others.

Well, that's our part of the business that's most impacted, and a lot of the business is in the workplace, travel, people gathering in groups. So it's all the things people aren't doing today. Not really too concerned in general with that business. I think that as things come back, I think it's going to come back real strong, probably slower than foodservice. The only 2 parts of it that really concern me. I don't know that theatres will come back as big as they were. I guess, I personally think they will, but that -- I hear a lot of people that have a different opinion. And then the workplace, office coffee, particularly. I think it could come back smaller. I think that a lot of companies, us included, have figured out that they don't quite need the number of people that they needed before based on -- they came back to the same revenue base. So those things concern me. But also, we have so many good things going on in the Vistar part of the business. And then convenience has done extremely well, been a real pleasant surprise.

The -- because when you think about Vistar, so I mean you use the same DCs, right, for the different channels. You may have a slightly different sales force, but let's say theater and office coffee is weaker in retail and e-commerce is stronger, right? The degree to which you can shift those resources from one channel to another, there's a fair bit of flexibility to do that, correct?

Yes. Because it's SKU-based. It's quite similar. So there's a definite ability to do that. And then we've opened another automated pick and pack facility in Pennsylvania. And then we've got another one that's opening soon in Reno, Nevada. And that's helping because the fulfillment side of our business is a good growth business for us. So the company may look different. But it will produce really well. I've got all the confidence in the world in Vistar.

And I don't think -- correct me if wrong. I don't think that -- when you look at the Vistar warehouses, I don't think there's any that are so reliant on theater and coffee that those particular locations are being -- the economics are being hurt disproportionately. Is that fair?

Yes. I mean any time you take out a fairly significant volumes, and you want to make sure that you're not dialing the business all the way down, and you've got to have the people in place that can handle that business, it's going to impact you. But once again, I would say with Vistar, it's a slower recovery, but it will be a good recovery.

Now you mentioned convenience, right? So there always seemed to be a ton of potential with the Eby acquisition, right? So maybe start with when you think of about new account wins or new account attraction, there was always a lot of potential there pre-COVID. Where does that sit now kind of post-COVID, right, your ability to pick up new convenience store chains in geographies?

Yes. We've done well with new accounts, mostly independent, almost entirely independent. We did pick up a couple of markets with some chain business. So we've opened a new facility in Tampa that started shipping at the beginning of December. And we have one opening in Raleigh that will start shipping next month. So those have been a big help. And we're still learning the business. We certainly bought a company that's got people that know the business extremely well, but we're still learning. We -- Foodservice got -- within the convenience, store was pretty heavily impacted, particularly things that -- like a roller grill. Nobody is going to pick product up that -- in this kind of environment. But that's starting to come back. What's been real good for us is that we actually, today, do more Foodservice business into convenience stores out of Performance Foodservice and Reinhart than we do out of Eby. So we expect to see that continue. Pizza has been big for us. So we've got a good feeling about that business, but we need a little bit more time.

Well, you would think, right, the longer-term trends, right, in that business, they need to rely more on Foodservice, right, if they're going to differentiate themselves. You keep hearing -- it sounds like they would like -- a lot of those operators might like to have more drive-throughs, right, to do more Foodservice. You would think that's a growth business for them. And so does your capabilities, your foodservice capabilities versus other convenience store distributors, is that a key advantage that can allow you to win business because that's a focus for them, and that's a strength for you?

Yes, we believe so. And obviously, we need to prove that out. But so far, so good.

And the -- when you look at the other part of Eby right was getting a foot into tobacco. And what that could do for you versus other retailers who also sold tobacco and we want that on the same truck? I think that was part of the, right, the case for Eby. Where does that sit and is that a big opportunity to...

I believe it could be a big opportunity. We only had very small wins so far. And I think that's another one of those things post-COVID when people are looking at maybe doing something different. That's when I think our opportunities will come. But so far, it's been really small ones.

One of the -- I guess when you think about the competitive landscape, so it's sort of been interesting, right? There haven't been -- you go back to March, when we thought there was going to be a lot of fallout from your competitors, smaller ones. There hasn't been as much of that. But it's now the real opportunity that they may struggle right to invest in sales, inventory capabilities in the recovery phase, right, that now that's the opportunity against some of the smaller subscale operators?

Yes. Working capital is a big part of our business. And you can have a heavily impacted P&L and at the same time, improve your balance sheet as accounts receivable goes down and inventory goes down. And I think it has been very resilient. And I think that our competitors, we got a lot of tough competitors and they have hung in there really, really well. But I think if there's going to be opportunities, particularly from an M&A standpoint, it's going to come when it's time to reload on inventory and reload receivables as business comes back, and some people may not want to go. They may have had enough at this point of dealing with the business and may not want to do that. So we're always hopeful from an M&A standpoint. We've got a lot of white space in the West that were either not present at all or were subscale or basically a legacy Roma. So we're hopeful. But so far, we haven't -- we just haven't seen a lot of weakness in competitors.

When is the time to reload or lean into inventory? And obviously, you don't want to do it too soon, too quickly, but are we -- is it really kind of summertime, warm weather, vaccine, et cetera?

Yes. I mean, it's a tough one. Do you want to comment there, Jim?

Yes. Thanks, George, I was going to say that could be the right time. We watch it really close. What we've seen, though, in the past, at least 4 or 5 months, is our operating companies who make the biggest decisions around how much inventory to carry have really done a good job of managing that closely, been very efficient with working capital investments, at the same time, seeing no deterioration in service levels. So I think that could be right. At the same time, whenever that comes, we'll be ready. We have a really strong well-fortified balance sheet, and we'll be prepared to do what we need to do to keep providing the service levels our customers are accustomed to.

The -- so George, you brought up the topic of M&A. One of the challenges, right, for -- I think for the industry, the last 6 to 9 months figuring out where EBITDA lands, right?

Yes.

And, right, the sellers want to use '19 and the buyers want to use '20. And so it always struck me that we probably needed to get to the end of '21 or early '22 before we knew the answer to that question. Is that fair? Or do you think we'll get the answer quicker?

I think that's very fair. I mean, it's tough to use '19 numbers because you don't know what things are going to come back. And I don't think anybody is going to sell based on their 2020 numbers that's Foodservice, the best of business. As we get in the earlier stages of the -- more of a recovery, you get 2 willing people and you can sit down and work it out, yes, that could happen. We certainly are willing partners to do that. But I think that it's stall right now, and it may be a while.

Well, once you determine what the applicable EBITDA base is, do you think the value of -- well, [ those thing ] about tuck-ins, in particular, but the value has changed, right? Because it used to be sort of low double-digit multiples on whatever you thought the EBITDA was, has that now changed permanently? Or once we're in a recovery mode, no, it goes back to that level?

I think that's to be determined. I don't have a great feel there yet.

The other question, I think, is sort of interesting, right, when you look at learnings from COVID, right? Because I think on a continuum, you guys have been really good at driving market share. You've been less focused right on optimizing profit margin, right, which I think there's a lot of share opportunities, that's the right approach. But did you learn anything through COVID where you said, we can be more efficient in these areas without impacting our ability to grow share?

We definitely learned. And I guess what -- the remark I would make is that if sales come back -- the market comes back to normal, we'll come back with lower expense ratios. I mean, we've learned -- when you do $620 million a week and 2 weeks later, you did $290 million, you tend to learn a little bit as to what you really need to operate the business. But we're also getting a lot of benefit that I don't think will necessarily be long term. When you've got workers' comp that's really dropped because you had all experienced people out there and it's the inexperienced ones that are more likely to get injured. Health care, I mean people couldn't go to a doctor. So you can imagine expenses went down. I'm sure there's other areas that Jim could probably add to that, but the only thing that I would be confident to say is that we should come back with lower expense ratios than we were pre-COVID.

And you think the biggest differences are, what -- is it warehouse labor cost, primarily warehouse productivity?

Yes. I mean, those are both things that we benefited and are those benefits because of the time and the circumstances and you're basically operating your business with all quite experienced people. Those are things that we'll find out, and that's why we are really hesitant to give any hard numbers because we know these things aren't all permanent. One of the things that Jim has mentioned is travel. I mean, our travel cost, you can imagine how much lower that is. Well, I can assure you, we've learned that we don't need to travel as much as we did before, and there are things that we can do like we're doing this meeting right now that can be done soon. But we will travel more. I mean, we've got to get back out there and see people and see customers, in particular, it's very important. So we'll come back. I keep repeating myself, but we'll come back with lower expense ratios. But as to what degree, I don't know, and that's provided the moment it comes back.

Well, I think -- tell me if I'm wrong, both of your peers have announced somewhat sizable, right, cost reduction programs. You haven't announced anything. Did you guys do any of that and just didn't want to talk about it? Or did you not do it because you wanted to make sure -- I mean, your top line has been better than theirs, but you wanted to make sure that you had the people for the recovery?

Yes. I wanted to make sure we have the people. And we have markets where we're more than recovered, where we're doing a good bit more business than we were a year ago. And as soon as we picked up and we started to do more business than a year ago, we had the same problems we had a year ago, and that's getting the right amount of labor. It's not easy in today's world to get that done. I mean we dialed the business back or the way I like to say, we dialed it back, but we didn't shut it off. And yes, let shareholders to -- got to be responsible and make sure we get our expenses as well as we can get them. And I -- hopefully, we kind of balance those 2 things. I'm sure we didn't do it perfectly, but we didn't make any long-term structural changes where we could say, we've got this many dollars that, for sure, aren't coming back. That we did not do.

John, one of the things we did do, though, early on, as you expect, a company like us to do is we made a very long and exhausted list of operating expense levers that we could pull when we needed to pull them and we all review them as a senior team and along with the field, we made decisions to early on pull quite a few of those levers to get OpEx where George mentioned. So the approach was detailed and disciplined. And we knew what we're doing. But no, we didn't publicize it.

Right. Did the synergy target that you had for Reinhart always seems, I'd say, conservative with plenty of room. I always thought on the idea that there was going to be a level of reinvestment, right, back into their business, specifically. Is that fair? And then has COVID changed in your mind, either the feasibility of that number or the timing to realization? Or is it basically still on track as it was a year ago?

Well, we're certainly on track. How the company performs and the impact we have on the business long term are more important actually than getting the synergies. They're nice when you get them, but if you disrupt the business to get it done, that's not very good. So we are investing. We've completed a new facility in Wisconsin with them. We're doing a major addition in Pittsburgh. We're building a new facility in Louisiana. So we'll invest. We, at this point, haven't seen a reason to consolidate. There's certainly synergies there if we consolidate it, but the synergies may come with other issues that we're not prepared for right now. So I'm comfortable that we'll get that number. Jim can comment on that as well. But we're not going to do anything real disruptive right now. We're going to continue to coexist.

Yes. That's -- I absolutely concur. And I think the one thing I would add is it could have been easy for companies to slow down integration and synergy capture during the last 6 months. And we took it as an opportunity to apply bandwidth and resources to go out and continue pushing through integration and synergy capture and the team responded exceptionally well.

Is the new facilities you mentioned, they are replacement facilities? Is that right? And...

One is replacement. One is just a major addition. And then the other one also is a replacement. Yes.

And when you think about, right, because one of the opportunities without closing any facilities is to reroute and reduce stem miles. Was that a sizable part or any part of the $50 million? And I believe if it was, that was toward the tail end right of your time period.

Yes. John, we're not in a position where we want to give up any capacity at all. Consolidating would be certainly synergistic. But I think the downside would be greater right now. So we're -- we feel good about hitting the synergy number, and we feel better than ever about the growth of the business. And that's really the important part, is being able to get both those things done.

And as we sort of get towards the end here, maybe one -- maybe how you address bigger, right, larger scale M&A? And when you think -- putting aside being able to value a business, when do you think from a balance sheet and an operational perspective, that becomes something where you have the bandwidth and are willing to take that on?

Well, we don't suffer for bandwidth to do that. That's for sure. And Jim, you should probably speak to just capital structure and our confidence there.

Yes, we're very confident in our capital structure. Look, so pleased we've -- the capital market, the debt market responded really well when we called for help and supported us. We've done I think all the right things the company should do as far as strengthening the balance sheet but also preserving the liquidity that we added, that incremental liquidity for the most part is in place. So we're in very good shape from a liquidity standpoint.

The -- yes, when you think about mix of business, right, because George, you had talked about that you think your operating cost structure will be more efficient. Given the recovery you've seen, right, particularly in your independent business, it doesn't sound like there are any structural headwinds to mix that would prevent you from getting back to or exceeding prior profitability levels?

Today, no. I mean, our independent business has declined at a much lower rate than our chain business. Part of that is because so much of our chain business is casual dining, which has suffered pretty heavy. I -- this is just my opinion, but I think that when things come back, I think they're going to -- I think there's a lot of pent-up demand. And I think a lot of the chains are going to do well. And we'll see what kind of happens to our mix then. But most of the chains we sell have retrenched somewhat. I mean, they've closed some units, but not to the degree, I think, is probably independents have. So when that demand comes back, we may find ourselves in a position. We haven't been in it a long time in the industry, and it's somewhat healthy position to be in, but there may be more demand than supply. But those are single-purpose buildings. So somebody's going to end up in those restaurants. It's rare that you see a restaurant go out of business and something come in other than a restaurant.

What are you seeing on the larger chain new account front? I don't think we've seen much movement there.

There really hasn't been a lot of movement. I think it's been more people just signing on with whatever agreement they have for a longer period of time. But we're always pursuing, and we would -- where we got capacity, we certainly have an interest in the chain business.

No, I think -- maybe I'm wrong, I think capacity is somewhat limited on that side. Would you have to take business out to accommodate new business, you're okay?

For the most part, we would have to do that. We've really only done that once. It's not something we like doing. But we're always looking, John. If the right opportunity came along, we would certainly look close at it. But we don't like telling customers, we're not going to do business with them anymore. So we'd rather get more capacity.

And maybe one last big picture topic. We've talked a lot about how COVID's changed how you run your business. But I'm thinking, when you look at product assortment, right, what you're going to keep in your warehouses, pricing, routing. As you think about the profound impact structurally that maybe COVID has had, not just now, but I'm saying for the next couple of years, what would the impact be on any of that? Is there less structural assortment? Is there -- has been there a change in routing [indiscernible]?

No, we've -- routing was obviously a challenge. Most of that is not a manual process, and our people did really a great job. I think one of the things that helped us from a sales standpoint is that they were able to pivot quick and change these routes and still keep unreasonably efficient to make sure that we take care of the customer. We have had some SKU consolidation, mostly done by our manufacturers. A lot of them reduced their SKU offering and some fairly substantially. Particularly those that are strong in retail, and they were running those lines nonstop, and they didn't want to stop and go to the different packaging, they just kept producing product and reducing the SKU base. So that's an important part of it. But we need -- in most of our distribution centers, we need more SKUs, not less SKUs.

Okay. And those would be the primary impacts -- operational impacts from COVID, do you think?

Yes. The tough areas we're routing and purchasing because our customer base changed and our item base changed a good bit. We saw -- I don't think it was huge, but we had many customers who reduced their menu or reduced their menu for at least a period of time to get some complexity out of the business and to have a menu that was better suited for items that traveled well as the bulk of their business was take out.

Well, I think we have a few minutes left, but I think we've covered a lot of ground.

We sure have.

Yes. We don't have any questions in the queue. So I think we'll stop it there. And I thank you guys. This has been extremely helpful.

Yes. Thank you for your time, John.

Great. Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.