Wholesale food & beverage in Gothenburg

Gothenburg and the rest of Västra Götaland County account for a significant share of Swedish food distribution — from Bohuslän regional dairies to specialty coffee and bakery producers in the city centre. Proximity to the port makes the city a natural hub for exporters that also sell into Denmark, Norway, and Germany. As a food wholesaler though, you have specific requirements: batch handling, expiry dates (BBD), traceability under EU regulation 178/2002, and correct VAT rates per product group (Sweden standard 25%, food reduced 12%). BrandGate handles these in core functionality — no need to bolt addons onto a generic e-commerce platform. Retailers and restaurants in Gothenburg, from the Saluhallen market to Restaurang 28+, can order directly through your distributor portal with the right discount tier and VAT rate pre-applied.

Each food item in BrandGate can register batch ID, production date, and best-before date. Stock sorts automatically FIFO so your 3PL always picks the oldest batch first. Retailers don't see individual batch IDs at order time, but you as the wholesaler have full traceability if a recall is needed. In a recall scenario you can filter "every order with batch X that hasn't been returned" in four clicks and pull the affected retailer contact list. Same flow required under Swedish Food Agency recall rules and it saves hours compared to manual tracing in Excel. The BrandGate invoice includes batch information for traceability, and the same info flows through the export to Fortnox.

Swedish VAT on food is 12% (reduced), while prepared meals and certain alcoholic beverages sit at 25%. For a wholesaler with a mixed catalogue (e.g. a coffee producer with coffee at 12% and gift sets at 25%) this gets messy manually. BrandGate sets VAT per product, not per customer — each item carries a declared rate and the invoice totals automatically. For a restaurant customer ordering both roasted beans (12%) and a gift box with wine glasses (25%) you get two VAT totals on the same invoice, correctly split. The Fortnox export is pre-posted against the right VAT accounts so your books stay in sync with Skatteverket's OSS and VAT-declaration requirements.

A Gothenburg food wholesaler typically works against three customer types: grocery retail (ICA stores, Coop, Hemköp), restaurants/cafe chains, and specialty stores (Saluhallen, organic shops, wine retailers). Each has different demands on order frequency, minimum values, and product info. In BrandGate you handle this with distributor groups — e.g. "ICA stores", "Restaurants", "Specialty" — each with its own price list, minimum values, and product visibility. A restaurant group might get the full catalogue including catering kits, while a specialty group gets access to exclusive single-origin batches. Onboarding a new retailer typically takes 5–10 minutes: you send an invite link, the retailer sets a password, and their price list is live.