Wholesale Compared: Booker vs Costco vs JJ Foodservice vs Local Cash & Carry

Wholesale Compared: Booker vs Costco vs JJ Foodservice vs Local Cash & Carry

Every food vendor has the same Sunday-night question: where does the stock actually come from this week? The answer shapes your margins more than any pricing tweak at the hatch. This guide compares the four realistic options for UK mobile caterers, with the membership rules checked and the honest trade-offs laid out, including the ones the wholesalers' adverts skip.

What Actually Matters for a Mobile Caterer

You're not a restaurant with a dry store and a daily delivery slot. You buy in bursts before events, you store in a van or a lock-up, and a missing ingredient on Friday night is a menu change, not an inconvenience. So the comparison that matters isn't just price per kilo. It's opening hours, distance from your route, delivery minimums, whether the pack sizes fit your fridge and whether you can get allergen spec sheets without begging.

Keep that last one in mind. Proper wholesalers publish full ingredient and allergen data for their own-brand lines, which feeds straight into your allergen matrix. Random wholesale-ish bargains from the discount aisle don't.

Booker

The default for a reason. Booker has around 170 branches, membership is free with proof of business (a food registration confirmation does the trick), and the catering own-brands cover most of a street food menu at trade prices. Click and collect is well drilled, delivery exists for bigger accounts and the catering ranges come with published spec sheets.

The everyday advantages are boring and real: early trade hours, catering pack sizes (2.5kg not 250g), staff who deal with caterers all day. If you're an NCASS member there's a sweetener too, since standard membership comes with a £100 Booker voucher, which we covered in our SFBB vs NCASS guide.

The weakness is that nobody's cheapest at everything. Booker wins on catering staples and loses on some branded lines and fresh produce, depending on branch. Which is why the traders who do this well price a basket. They don't pick a tribe.

Costco

Costco is a paid club: the trade-facing Business membership runs about £26 including VAT a year, with the personal Gold Star tier at £42. You'll need proof of trading for the business tier. Shelf prices are marked excluding VAT, which catches every new member at the till at least once.

What you're paying the membership for is quality-per-pound on specific categories: meat, cheese, produce, catering-adjacent kit. The value is frequently excellent and the quality is consistent in a way bargain wholesale sometimes isn't. What you're tolerating is a warehouse built for households: weekend crowds, retail pack sizes on plenty of lines and a limited catering-specific range. Costco works best as a targeted raid for the categories where it wins, not as your everything supplier.

JJ Foodservice

JJ is the delivery-first option. Registration is free and ordering is online with booked slots. Depots cover click and collect, and unlike most trade wholesalers the public can buy too, so there's no membership gatekeeping at all. The range leans hard into catering: frozen lines, packaging, sauces in catering tubs, the stuff street food actually runs on.

For a vendor without a van day to spare, a JJ delivery landing at the lock-up on Thursday is genuinely valuable. Delivery minimums and charges vary by area. Check yours before planning the week around it. The catch is the one all delivery models share: you can't squeeze the avocados. Fresh produce quality arrives as a surprise, good or bad. Substitutions happen in busy weeks too.

Local Independents

Bestway, Parfetts, Dhamecha, the regional independents: this is the wildcard worth checking. Registration is typically free with business proof, and on specific lines (drinks, snacks, world foods, oil) they regularly beat everyone above. Independents also do relationships in a way nationals can't: turn up weekly for a season and the manager starts mentioning when your lines are about to go on promotion.

Coverage and range vary enormously by region, which is the honest limit. Treat the local option as a price check on your top sellers rather than an article of faith either way.

Side by Side

The Basket Test

Pick your twenty highest-volume lines (the oil, the buns, the chicken, the napkins) and price the identical basket at each supplier you can realistically reach. Two hours of admin, once a season. Traders who run this test almost always land on a split: staples from Booker or JJ, a Costco raid monthly for the categories it wins, the local independent for two or three lines that turn out weirdly cheap there.

Then re-run it in January and July, because wholesale prices drift constantly and loyalty is a cost. The basket that was cheapest in March quietly isn't by September.

Questions Vendors Actually Ask

What proof of business do wholesalers want?

Usually any one of: your food business registration confirmation, a recent supplier invoice, a business bank statement, a website with matching details. Sole traders qualify everywhere. Registering your food business with the council (free, and legally required anyway) opens the whole trade tier system as a side effect.

Is delivery or cash and carry actually cheaper?

Cash and carry usually wins on the invoice. It loses once you cost your time. A four-hour round trip to save £15 is a £3.75-an-hour job. Most established vendors settle on delivery for the heavy predictable stuff with a collect top-up run before big weekends.

Can I mix suppliers without it becoming chaos?

Two or three suppliers is the sweet spot. Past that you're managing minimums and missing deliveries across too many moving parts. Keep one supplier as your backbone and let the others earn specific categories off the back of your basket test.

What about allergen information on wholesale products?

Booker and JJ publish spec sheets with full ingredient and allergen data for own-brand catering lines, downloadable per product. Costco stock is branded retail product, so the label is your data. Wherever you buy, the allergen info has to flow into your own records, because "it was in the wholesaler's system" doesn't help you at the hatch when someone asks about sesame.

Do wholesale prices include VAT?

Booker, JJ, the independents: all generally display ex-VAT pricing. Costco's shelf labels are ex-VAT too. Budget from the checkout total, not the shelf. If you're VAT registered you'll claim it back. If you're not, that missing 20% is the difference between a margin and a mistake.

The Bottom Line

Booker is the backbone for most mobile caterers: free, everywhere, built for the trade. JJ turns stock into a delivery slot instead of a van day. Costco earns its £26 on the categories where quality-per-pound is king. The local independent is a price check that sometimes becomes a habit. Run the basket test, split accordingly, re-check twice a year. Loyalty is for customers, not suppliers.

Last updated: August 2026. Membership terms and prices checked at publication and subject to change, so confirm with each wholesaler.