HoReCa & Gastro Distribution

A Swiss gastro distributor is valued at 3.0 - 4.5× EBITDA on a statutory (tax-based) basis and 4.0 - 6.0× EBITDA in actual transactions. The spread between statutory and deal multiples is an arbitrage opportunity for informed buyers. The market trend is rated as stable, with an arbitrage gap rated as medium, in a class that lost 12% of its enterprises between 2019 and 2024 while employment grew 5.6%. What moves the multiple here is the customer book: how much revenue sits with hotel and restaurant groups that put their supply out to tender, how much with owner-run kitchens, how the receivables behaved in an industry whose bankruptcies rose 45% in the first eleven months of 2025, and whether the warehouse and the delivery fleet need replacing soon after the purchase.

Key valuation drivers include: Scale has grown with consolidation: non-specialised food wholesalers averaged 23.7 full-time equivalents per enterprise in 2024, against 18.7 in 2011 (BFS STATENT); A customer base that reorders every week: 22,900 food service enterprises and 3,206 hotels, inns and guesthouses were registered in 2024. Factors that can compress valuations include: Demand is falling at the customer end: restaurant revenue dropped 4.5% year on year in the second quarter of 2026 (KOF/GastroSuisse); Investment eats the margin: Pistor's profit slipped to CHF 26.2 million in 2025 from CHF 26.8 million while it built a new distribution centre. Deal multiples typically range from 4.0 - 6.0× EBITDA, but actual prices vary significantly based on customer concentration, management quality, revenue predictability, and geographic reach within Switzerland's 26 cantons.

The Federal Statistical Office counted 422 enterprises in non-specialised wholesale of food, beverages and tobacco in 2024, employing 11,290 people and 9,995 full-time equivalents — the class that holds full-range gastro distributors and cash & carry operators (BFS STATENT). Suppliers that specialise are counted elsewhere: 840 beverage wholesalers, 664 other specialised food wholesalers, 295 for fruit and vegetables, 171 for coffee, tea and spices, 116 for meat and 105 for dairy, eggs and edible oils. Zurich and Vaud hold 57 enterprises each of the non-specialised class, Ticino 56 and Geneva 50, but the employment sits elsewhere: five enterprises registered in Basel-Stadt employ 2,649 people between them. The ~1,200 distributors and ~15,000 employees of the February 2026 edition could not be traced and are withdrawn.

No published statistic measures the age of the owners of Swiss food distributors or how many of them lack a successor. The 300-400 family-owned distributors, the average owner age of 62 and the ~18% succession rate in the February 2026 edition had no source and are withdrawn. What the commercial register does show is where the businesses end up: Transgourmet Schweiz absorbed five companies in 2024, Demaurex & Cie took over CCA Angehrn AG in 2018, frigemo absorbed Berger SA in 2022 and CFD SA in 2025, Bataillard absorbed Vimaco AG in 2017 and Mérat absorbed Tipesca SA. The statistics show the same thing from the other side: the class lost 57 enterprises between 2019 and 2024 while employment rose 5.6%, so the work stays and the company names disappear. For a buyer the due diligence questions are specific: how many customers are on written contracts rather than habit, how old the delivery fleet and the cold rooms are, whether the warehouse is owned or leased and for how long, how much of the gross margin comes from supplier rebates that a new owner would have to renegotiate, and how exposed the receivables are to an industry whose bankruptcies rose 45% in the first eleven months of 2025. Deal multiples for the sector typically run 4.0 - 6.0× EBITDA.

Four trends define the sector in 2026: (1) Transgourmet absorbs its rivals — Transgourmet Schweiz AG, registered in Basel and formerly named PRODEGA AG, absorbed D-Food AG, MultiFood SA, DMFD SA and Saviva AG during 2024 according to the commercial register. (2) Cash and carry crosses the language border — Demaurex & Cie S.A. of Chavannes-près-Renens, which trades as Aligro in French-speaking Switzerland and as CC Aligro in the German-speaking cantons, took over CCA Angehrn AG of Gossau in 2018 and now has thirteen branches in the commercial register. (3) Suppliers spend on warehouses, platforms and trucks — Pistor, the Rothenburg cooperative that supplies bakeries, confectioners and restaurants, raised revenue 3.7% to CHF 857.8 million in 2025 and put a new distribution centre in Sennwald into service. (4) The customers' revenue is falling — Restaurant revenue in the KOF and GastroSuisse business survey fell 4.5% in the second quarter of 2026 against the same quarter of 2025, after declines of 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 3.7% in the first quarter of 2026.

The principal acquisition risks are: (1) Customer insolvency: hospitality bankruptcies rose 45% between January and November 2025 (Dun & Bradstreet); (2) One group sets the terms: Coop's wholesale and production division turned over CHF 17.2 billion in 2025, CHF 11.9 billion of it in the Transgourmet group; (3) Volumes follow guests, and hotel overnight stays fell 0.7% in the first half of 2026 after the 2025 record. Buyers should conduct thorough due diligence on customer concentration, regulatory compliance, and key-person dependencies. Deal multiples of 4.0 - 6.0× EBITDA may be discounted for firms with elevated risk profiles.

An indicative cost split for a Swiss full-range gastro distributor is: Goods purchased (food, beverages, non-food): 77%, Personnel (warehouse, drivers, sales, administration): 10%, Transport and fleet (vehicles, fuel, cold chain): 4%, Warehouses and property (rent, refrigeration, energy): 3%, IT, marketing and administration: 2%, Depreciation and maintenance: 1%, Operating margin (EBITDA): 3%. Indicative split for a full-range distributor that buys, stores and delivers. The February 2026 edition gave EBITDA margins of 3-6% for full-service distributors, 6-10% for specialists and 5-8% for cash & carry operators without a traceable source; those ranges are withdrawn. One published anchor exists in this niche: Pistor reported a profit of CHF 26.2 million on revenue of CHF 857.8 million for 2025, equal to 3.1% of revenue after depreciation, interest and tax. Cash & carry shifts cost out of delivery and into the store, while delivery models carry the fleet: Pistor put seven electric trucks into service in 2025 and opened a distribution centre in Sennwald. For a buyer the two decisive numbers are the gross margin after supplier rebates and the delivery cost per drop, because both move at once when a route or a large customer is lost.

Switzerland's gastro distributors cluster in five regions: (1) Zurich — Zurich holds 57 of the 422 non-specialised food wholesalers, with 3,679 employees and 3,262 full-time equivalents, about a third of the class in one canton. (2) Vaud and Geneva — Vaud and Geneva together hold 107 enterprises of the class with 1,899 employees, a quarter of the enterprises but a sixth of the jobs. (3) Ticino — Ticino has 56 enterprises in the class but only 288 employees, an average of 4.4 full-time equivalents each and the smallest average in the country. (4) Bern and Central Switzerland — Bern and Lucerne hold only 45 enterprises of the class with 407 employees, yet this is where several national suppliers run their operations. (5) Eastern Switzerland — St. Gallen and Thurgau hold 21 enterprises of the class but 1,423 employees between them, an average size far above the national one. Size varies more than location: the class averages 23.7 full-time equivalents per enterprise nationally, 57.2 in Zurich and 4.4 in Ticino.