Dot Foods, Inc., said to be North America’s largest food industry redistributor, has acquired Morsum, a food industry data and AI platform technology company.

Since its founding by Ted D’Cruz-Young in 2012, Morsum has built a high-tech food operating system (fOS^™) that improves profitability across a wide range of food service scenarios. With a suite of data-integrated products supporting CRM, labor, inventory, and purchasing management, Morsum improves day-to-day efficiency, operational simplicity, and cost control.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Morsum into the Dot Foods family,” says Dot Foods CEO Joe Tracy. “Dot is committed to continuously building on our mission to significantly contribute to the success of our business partners. Morsum’s innovative products and extraordinary data capabilities will be key in helping us facilitate success for everyone in the food ecosystem using technology.”

Morsum has spent nearly ten years working to bridge data gaps that cause unnecessary food and labor costs for everyone involved in the food ecosystem. Morsum’s significant expertise in mapping food data helps automate key decisions, enrich product data to aid customers in making more informed buying decisions, and minimize non-core activity. This all facilitates a greater focus on customer-valued activity. Dot’s industry relationships will expand access to Morsum’s capabilities.

“Making life easier and more rewarding for food service establishments has always been our singular pursuit,” says Ted D’Cruz-Young, Morsum CEO. “Dot’s unique position in the market and evolved understanding on the role and value of data made the decision to join the Dot family of businesses easy. With Dot’s clear-eyed and disciplined approach, I know that we will deliver tremendous value for distributor partners, their food service customers, and Dot’s suppliers. We’re really excited.”

When FE asked if Morsum will still work with its existing customers, or will Morsum be exclusive to Dot, D’Cruz-Young responded, “Morsum will continue to seek opportunities to add value to its existing customers as well as future customers. We are also focused on finding opportunities to leverage their capabilities that will add significant value to our customers and business partners.

More about Morsum acquisition

FE had a few additional questions about the Morsum acquisition. It appears that Morsum is located in the UK. If that is correct, how will Morsum work with Dot Foods?

“Morsum’s team is located in several countries,” says Cullen Andrews, Dot Foods VP of sales. “They have had remote teams for several years that effectively collaborate and build innovative products and services. They have an extremely talented core team. Like many other organizations, Dot has had remote teams across our business for a number of years and that has certainly accelerated recently, so we are confident in working with the Morsum team effectively. The Morsum team will continue to operate as its own entity, which will allow us to move faster in creating new products and capabilities that ultimately will generate significant value to our customers. Dot will help with providing the resources to allow for that team to flourish.”

How does this new combination of expertise affect food and beverage processors whose products are distributed by Dot? “We believe this will align well with our continued pursuit to grow our supplier partners’ business,” says Dot’s Andrews. “We will develop new digital products that will help our suppliers reach customers they wouldn’t have otherwise had access too. We have prioritized having best in class product data for years and have been involved in driving adoption of GS1 standards from the beginning. Being involved with GS1 and adopting their standards has been the key driver to allow us to have the product data we use today. Morsum’s AI/ML capabilities can enrich our existing product data that will lead to a better experience for customers. In addition, we will be able to utilize data to generate more valuable insights through Morsum’s capabilities. We will focus on insights that will improve our partners’ business.”

FE asked if Morsum’s AI/ML experience in its varied applications help to solve supply chain problems—which seem to be many? “No one thing can solve today’s supply chain problems! With that said, we are exploring ways to leverage Morsum’s AI/ML capabilities to turn data into actionable information that can improve the service disruption that is occurring today,” says Andrews. “This can allow us to be more targeted in identifying opportunities to improve service.”

What are other benefits of this acquisition? “Part of Dot’s brand promise is creating innovative solutions for our business partners,” says Andrews. “Having a team that is focused on driving innovation faster, especially in the Ecommerce space will be a big benefit.”