Is Sysco Making Every Restaurant the Same, or Saving Small Business Owners?

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Sysco Is Ruining American Restaurants. Or Saving Them.

Depending on whom you ask, the giant food distributor is flattening the way we eat, or helping small business owners survive. Maybe both are true?

Sysco Is Ruining American Restaurants. Or Saving Them.

Depending on whom you ask, the giant food distributor is flattening the way we eat, or helping small business owners survive. Maybe both are true?

Every day, Sysco trucks deliver wholesale food and restaurant supplies to thousands of business across the United States.Credit...Adrian Wilson for The New York Times

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· 17:16 min

By Meghan McCarron

Reporting from New Jersey, Texas and Idaho.

Nov. 3, 2026

Amy Russo is not trying to get rich. And she’s not trying to win a Michelin star. She’s just trying to serve the best pancakes she can at Toast, her modern diner in Montclair, N.J., and feed her community.

“I want it to be 1979 all over again,” she said. “Where, like, you looked after your neighbor’s kids and sponsored the Little Leagues.”

No one expects New Jersey diners to be culinary innovators. Authenticity is their thing. But recently, a number of viral videos have alleged that Sysco, one of the distributors Ms. Russo uses, is undermining such authenticity, which diners expect from independent restaurants. Even Ms. Russo’s grown children have been sending videos to her.

“The minute a Sysco article comes out, somebody’s sending it to me, right?” she said. “I get why those videos go viral, but if you’re not in the business, you really just don’t get it.”

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Americans are never far from a Sysco meal. The company — a so-called broadline distributor that supplies restaurants with a dizzying array of offerings that includes frozen appetizers, fresh arugula, hand soap and much more — operates 340 warehouses across 10 countries and generated $81 billion in revenue in 2025.

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