Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. The day is finally here. Welcome to Sysco's 2024 Investor Relations Day. Let's go through a couple quick housekeeping items for everybody joining us, either online or physically here in the room. We do plan on discussing some forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forecast. For more information, please refer to our risk factors on our SEC website. Non-GAAP financial measures are included in our comments today and our presentation slides. The reconciliation of these measures is included at the end of the presentation and can also be found in the investor section of our website. Now off to goodies. Everybody loves goodies, right? So first, you'll see on your table a welcome card, specific QR code to you.
Please choose from one of our specialty items that will be delivered to your homes, and please register before May 24. Second, you'll also see a small box from our European Imports Specialty division, as well as a custom spice blend with Spiceology, a nice collaboration here. Now on to the main show. Today you're gonna hear from select members of our executive leadership team, update you on the business strategy, the long-term outlook. This will include Kevin Hourican, our Chair and CEO, Greg Bertrand, our COO, Neil Russell, our Chief Administrative Officer, Victoria Gutierrez, our Chief Merchant, and Kenny Cheung, our CFO. Please save questions to the end. We're gonna have a very robust Q&A session. It'll also be followed by lunch.
We're planning on showcasing some of our Sysco brand items, and as promised to many of the folks in this room, we will feed you incredibly well today. So before we get started, let's watch a brief video.
Every year, Sysco helps open thousands of restaurant doors, making millions of deliveries to over 725,000 customer locations all around the world.
Hey, Sysco!
Yes, Chef?
I know you're everywhere, but I want a smaller footprint. Can you get me local, fresh produce?
Yes, Chef. How about a whole farm for it? We source the most local, fresh produce, thanks to our many farming partners within 100 miles of your kitchen.
My menu is diverse and changes often. Can I get everything I need from Sysco?
Yes, Chef. From apples to aprons, we have everything you need.
We offer the broadest assortment in the food service industry, including our best-in-class Sysco brand products. If we don't have it, Sysco Marketplace will, with an expanded assortment from vetted third-party sellers seamlessly available through Sysco Shop.
What about specialty meat and custom cuts?
Yes, Chef. We offer dry age and hand cut to your specifications.
I need 80 pounds of onion for brunch tomorrow. Can Sysco do it?
Yes, Chef.
With Sysco Your Way, you can order until 9:00 P.M., six days per week, and with no order minimums. My morning starts early. Can Sysco help me get ahead of the day?
Yes, Chef. Our digital tools are available 24/7.
Personalized with offers, recommendations, and content just for you, from everyday staples to new inspirations.
That's great for the States, but what about Paris?
Yes, Chef. We support customers all around the world, and we can even help you expand your concept internationally.
Sysco leads with trust, offering a people-first approach to help businesses of all sizes take advantage of our international network. Because when our customers grow, we do, too. With a clear purpose in mind, connecting the world to share food and care for one another so we can greet the future with confidence, optimism, and a 74,000-person strong...
Yes, Chef!
Okay, good morning, everyone. I love that video, and not just because the first place New York Yankees were highlighted, which is a great Sysco customer. When I say that in Houston, by the way, I get booed. It's good to be back in New York. I'm originally from New York. No, I love that video because it shows the breadth, the depth, and the diversity of what we at Sysco, you know, bring to the table creatively through the lens and eyes of our customers. We wake up every day working hard to serve our customers through best-in-industry assortment, best-in-industry technology, best-in-industry sales colleagues, and ever-increasing international capabilities. More importantly, it highlights our people, 74,000 strong, who wake up every day getting prepared to say, "Yes, Chef," more often and better than anyone in the industry. So welcome.
We're glad to be able to be here with you, and we're thankful that you took your time to be with us, and those that have joined us virtually, we're thankful for you joining us as well. It's been three years since our last Investor Day presentation, and a lot has happened since that time.
... Many waves of COVID, massive supply chain disruptions, hyperinflation followed by deflation within six short months. We introduced, rolled out, and implemented a business strategy that we call our Recipe for Growth. We're here today to update you on the next chapter of Sysco's long history of business success. We'll update our business strategy, introduce some new concepts, and highlight with specificity what we are going to do to win in the marketplace and drive our business forward. The chart behind me is essentially a flow of the agenda of the types of things that we'll talk about. But let's not delay. Let's go ahead and jump in. As you know, we play in a large space, specifically, domestically, here in the United States, a $370 billion total addressable market. We have the largest share of that big pie at 17%.
But what's really great is that the pie is getting bigger each and every year, and our slice of that pie is growing over time. Bigger pie, bigger slice. We have domestic operations in 10 countries around the world, and what we mean by that is that we own trucking equipment, we own warehouses, and we have salespeople, boots on the ground, delivering to customers. 10 out of 10 countries worldwide. When you include the nine countries, plus the U.S., the total addressable market grows to $470 billion, making that pie even bigger, and internationally, the business is growing as well. Bigger pie, bigger slice. We at Sysco have consistently taken share in the industry on a rolling and ongoing basis. Why? As I've said on investor calls, reasonably frequently, are the following two main factors.
Number one is the biggest broadline players at scale are winning versus the market at large. The biggest players are winning due to scale of purchasing, scale of supply chain, and scale of technology. That's point number one. Point number two, and even more importantly specific to Sysco, is our specialty business and our specialty capabilities. Sysco's specialty business, and I'm gonna show you a chart on that in a moment, are growing substantially faster than specialty overall. And when you put those two things together, bigger broadline scale players are winning in the market versus the market overall, and specialty's hypergrowth. Those two things together are what produces the chart we're looking at here. The blue line is Sysco, the green line is the total market, and the horizontal line is the index to 2019 sales.
What you see when you look at the chart is we were the fastest to snap back and recover from COVID, and we've not looked back, continuing to take share profitably versus the market overall. Many in this room and online know our company very, very well. Some of you are newer to the name or less familiar with the Sysco story. Let's just talk for a few moments, a little bit about some of the facts for the company. As I said a moment ago, we're the number one market share player in the space. We operate the most distribution centers, the most multi-temperature trucks. To be crystal clear, the trucks that we deliver on are, in fact, multi-temperature, which is unique versus most transport companies.
We have the largest colleague population in this industry, supply chain colleagues and sales professional colleagues, and you'll hear us talk about both of those populations while we're here together. Roughly 70% of our business is our U.S. Broadline business plus Specialty. 20% of our business is international, but what you'll hear from us today is international is growing faster than our domestic business on both the top and the bottom line, and the other 11% is our Sigma plus other segments. I love this chart on the left-hand side in particular because it shows that we have consistently grown our business over our 54+ year history. In fact, there's only two times in our history where we did not grow: the 2008/2009 financial crisis and, of course, what happened in COVID.
What I find really interesting, though, is if you look at the slope of the line, even inclusive of those disruptions, we get back all of that business, because if you trend it, the business more than snaps back. It doesn't reset lower and then start growing from there. We get all of the business back during those very infrequent points of disruption. It's a very robust and healthy business that we are in, called food away from home. One of the reasons why is we have a very diverse set of customers. 60% of our customers are restaurant, from the largest restaurants to the smallest mom-and-pop. We have number one market share in each of the sectors we compete with, except for healthcare, where we are number two. And in healthcare, we have a very strong and profitable business that we are meaningfully focused on growing.
Our education, healthcare, and government businesses are recession-resistant, giving some stability to the base of our operations, which I know is one of the reasons why there are so few moments when this company does not grow and grow profitably. What's really interesting and compelling is that growth is happening across the world. This chart, if I could, let me just set it up and explain it. We're showing seven of our countries on the chart, but specifically what it shows is the green bar is the market share for that country in 2019. The blue bar is the market share for that country in 2023. If I could, I'm just gonna tell a little bit of storytelling about several of the countries to highlight the progress that's being made. Let me start with the biggest business.
As I mentioned earlier, the largest total addressable market by far. We've grown our market share in the United States by 170 basis points over this period of time. Let me jump up to Canada. If you look at the market share in Canada, it's actually the highest market share that we have in the globe. We've been in the country for more than 20 years, and we have 25% market share in Canada.... We've grown our market share in Canada over the last four years, 120 basis points. But what's more impressive than that, simultaneously, we exited some very large corporate accounts that were not sufficiently profitable, and the relationship was purely transactional, and those customers didn't want to have a relationship with Sysco that could be mutually beneficial. So we walked away from the business.
That's included in the market share gain of 120 basis points, and what it's enabled is a significant improvement in the profitability of that country. The next example, if I jump across the pond, and frankly, the one that we're most pleased with, proud of, and focused on replicating, is our success that we're having in Ireland. Smaller total addressable market, given that it's an island country, but look at the market share growth that we have produced in Ireland over the last four years, 330 basis points of growth. Some other fun facts about Ireland. Number one, the highest independent market share for our company as a percentage of our total business of anywhere on the globe. We are fully Sysco in Ireland. The trucks say Sysco, the colleagues' uniforms say Sysco.
We have a broad assortment range, modern technology, both in the supply chain and in the sales organization, and we have recently begun the implementation of our specialty strategies. As an example, our recent acquisition of Ready Chef in Ireland. Why we are winning in Ireland is because we are what we call full-fledged Sysco. Broad assortment, modern technology, local street sales force out on the ground, winning customers one by one. So proud of the Irish team and the good work they're doing. Jump across the Irish Channel to Great Britain, a much larger total addressable market. Our business has grown 260 basis points from a market share perspective, again, fueled by local wins. One of the challenges of the Brakes business that we purchased was that it was very over-indexed in large corporate national accounts.
By the way, corporate national accounts are very important, but we don't want to over-index in that business, and we were in GB. We've made tremendous progress on what we call Win with Local and have grown that business 260 basis points in meaningfully accelerated profit. Last but not least, let me go down to France. Two things to say about France. Number one is our market share is flattish over this period of time, but I call your attention to the other number down by France, $23 billion total addressable market. If you scan your eyes around the page, it's the second-highest total addressable market of any country we compete in, U.S. being the only one bigger. And why? It's pretty obvious. France is a foodie country, has a high GDP per capita income, and robust food restaurant scene.
Second point that's very interesting is France does not have a Sysco today. There is not a broadline distributor that operates in France. In fact, the largest player in that country is a cash-and-carry operator, and when you do delivery, it breaks up into seven different companies who each own a sliver from a category assortment perspective. We have a huge opportunity to profitably grow our France business. We weren't ready to put the gas pedal down four years ago because we had some challenges with some tech integrations tied to a merger that we did. That's now behind us. We have a stable operation, we have a stable systems platform, and we're ready to put the accelerator down in France, and we are very confident in our ability to be successful in that country. I could not have said that on our Investor Day three years ago.
International will be a meaningful growth engine for this company profitably. If I could, let me take you to the next meaningful growth opportunity for this company, and it's all things specialty. If I could highlight some of the stats and facts, and it will tell some color behind the statistics. We've grown our business from just four years ago, $3.8 billion - $9.3 billion. We've taken our market share from 6% - 10%, and we're just getting started. And why can I say that? Reminder, our market share in total is 17%, and that includes specialty. So if our specialty market share is at 10, our total's at 17, we have an enormous opportunity to grow our specialty segment. In fact, we would highlight it's a $10 billion+ growth opportunity for Sysco.
The how and the why will come from compelling acquisitions, like several on the right-hand side of the page that we have done, like Greco and Don, and by expanding the platforms we have to new physical geographies. You'll hear about that from Greg, and you'll hear about that from Victoria shortly. Most recently, the acquisition of Edward Don, the strategic why is clear. Every restaurant and every kitchen needs equipment and supplies. Don, we believed, was the best operator in the space, a more than 100-year-old company, successfully and profitably growing their business. We have a very compelling opportunity to cross-sell with Don's assortment in Sysco's customer base to profitably grow the Don business, and we are excited about that.
Any good business needs to have a strong and capable management team that leads the business on a daily basis, and I'm proud and honored to be able to work with a very talented leadership team. What I love about this team, if you scan the page and you look at the roles that they're in and the tenure that they have, it is a tremendous balance of long-tenured Sysco colleagues and external hires from great companies that have contextually relevant experience.
On the tenure side of the equation, our global COO, our head of operations, our head of local sales, and our head of national sales each have 25+ years with the company, and they're surrounded by a functional team that has tremendous capabilities, again, often from external companies that are contextually relevant to what we do, and you'll hear more about that today. Today with me are Greg, Neil, Victoria, and Kenny, and each of them will talk you through their contributions to our business and how they're helping profitably grow our business. And I look forward to having you meet other members of our management team as we host events at Sysco sites in coming quarters, in coming years. I've said many times before, Sysco is a purpose-driven company. So what does that mean? What does it mean to be a purpose-driven company?
What it means is our purpose, which you can see behind me, I'm not going to read it, motivates our colleagues, fuels our customer engagements, and prioritizes our work focus. Helps us guide, if you will, where we spend our time. The visual image of two chairs and an empty table is a visual metaphor for the employees that work at Sysco, that there is a seat at our table for everyone at Sysco. Nod to DE&I, a nod to diversity, nod to we want everyone, all types, all forms, all points of view working for us. And the why is very clear and very simple. We serve 700,000-plus customers who come from all walks of life, and we want our colleague population to match our customer population, because when we do, we win. It's also the right thing to do.
The caring part of our purpose talks about how we care for the environment through sustainability efforts, which you'll see when you go upstairs and see a showcase on key products that we're bringing to market. It also talks about how we care for our colleagues and care for our customers, because this is a relationships business. Let's get started. Let's get into the business. This chart displays how we will grow profitably for the next three years. In 2021, at our last Investor Day, which was virtual, nowhere near as much fun as being able to be with you in person, we introduced the right-hand side of the page, which we call internally our Recipe for Growth, a five-part growth strategy that I'll come back to in a moment.
Today, we are introducing the concept that, yes, that's important, but we need to drive the core of our business. Mathematically and factually, let me be crystal clear about this: the core represents 90% of Sysco's sales and profit. The Recipe for Growth is 10% of our sales and profit. At the last Investor Day, we focused almost exclusively on the growth and innovation. Today, we are going to in-depth cover how we're going to drive the core and also how we're going to advance the company for the future through the RFG. We need to do both, and we need to do both well in order to have the outcome success that we believe we are capable of delivering. So let's talk about the core. Let's deep dive into the core, and I don't mean my middle-aged midsection.
I mean the core of the company and how we're going to drive more fitness within the core. At the top, in the middle, in the bottom of the P&L. The chart shows what those things are. Top is volume, middle is merchandising, and the bottom is expense, and I'll do one page on each of these core elements. I'm going to go at reasonable pace because my colleagues are going to come up on stage after me and go much deeper into each of these topics. If it's okay with you, I'm going to move with pace. Let's start at the top of the P&L. Volume growth makes everything in life better. This is a relationships business fueled by sales colleagues, and I want to be very clear, we have the best colleagues in the industry.
Greg's going to articulate how with facts later on this morning, but what I'm also wanting to be clear on is we need to increase the size of our sales colleague population, and we're investing to do so. At our most recent quarterly earnings call, I quantified that outcome for this fiscal year. I said on that call, "Net 400+ colleagues in the sales professional ranks." Today, we are announcing and communicating that we will grow our net sales professional headcount by 400-500 colleagues each year, every year for the next three years, and that will be baked into our financial algorithms. So where will these folks come from? Yes, they will come from competitors, experienced hires who bring a compelling book of business with them. We will hire from our customers. You can hear from Greg Bertrand in a minute.
We hired him from a customer almost 35 years ago. It is a great tactic to hire a key person from a customer because they like Sysco, they know Sysco, and they can then bring that message to their friends and community peers. We'll also hire from culinary backgrounds and expertise. We do not have a challenge at Sysco hiring colleagues, and we have the best training program in the industry that helps those colleagues matriculate profitably and contribute strong ROIC for the company. Greg is going to come up and talk about each of these four things on how we're driving our core, including things like Total Team Selling and the optimization that we're doing with compensation. So I'm not going to steal any of his thunder. We will drive profitable volume growth.
The middle part of the P&L is Victoria's world, which is merchandising, creating value for our customers, inspiring them to buy more from Sysco by having an industry-leading, compelling assortment, and it starts with Sysco brand. It's a powerhouse for this company. Powerhouse from a product quality perspective, a margin profile perspective, and a growth perspective, and Victoria will double-click on each of those components. We're doing really good work in pricing, and we can do even better work, specifically this word agility. We've never had better control over our margins and our pricing in Sysco's history. Hard stop. Never been better at managing our margins. Where we can improve is being able to be more agile in the moment, when it matters, when a customer presents, "Hey, a competitor is undercutting you by X for this single item this week.
Sysco, what's your response?" We need to be faster in responding to those inquiries because they happen all day, every day, and we're going to improve in that regard. Sorry, one more thing. Italian and Asian, huge opportunity. We put them under our specialty header. You're gonna hear from Greg, how we're gonna expand Italian and Asian, because he runs our field sales and operations team, and you're gonna hear from Victoria because she runs the merchandising strategies, and more on that in a moment. Italian and Asian expansion. So the last part of the P&L, the expenses, where it all comes together. We must drive continuous improvement in our operations to lower our costs. And the why is there will be constant wage pressure. Each and every year, there will be constant wage pressure. That's number one.
Number two, we need to get back to 2019 levels of productivity within our supply chain. We're making progress. We're pleased with our progress, and there's more progress to be made. We need to get back to 2019 in both transportation and in ops, and frankly, we're not gonna stop. We're gonna keep going. The things that are on the right-hand side of the page are some of the longer-term bets, some of the longer-term strategic actions that will help us get farther than 2019's level of productivity. In the meantime, it's about one thing, retention. Increasing and improving our colleague retention drives productivity improvement. Kenny will size that math for you later on this morning, but what I will communicate is when we improve retention, everything else gets better. Shrink goes down, accident rates go down, productivity goes up, net promoter score goes up.
Driving improved retention is the key. One of the things we're gonna do to help motivate all of our leaders on that regard is we're gonna put in colleague engagement score improvement into our compensation plans in fiscal 2025, which starts on July first. We will drive improved productivity, so when we flow more volume through our P&L, it will handsomely flow through to the bottom line. So that's about driving the core. If I can now pivot to the Recipe for Growth, I essentially have one page for each of the five pillars. I'm gonna stay at a really high level because my colleagues will come up and go deeper, but I just want to remind you of our Recipe for Growth. Here's the main headline. It has not changed. Good companies don't need to pivot their strategy on an ongoing, rolling basis.
What we will do is update the specific tactics within the RFG, and I'll highlight some examples of that. But let's start with a fresh reminder of what the RFG is. It starts with the customer and the colleague at the center of the wheel. Serve them better, your business grows. The five elements are how we will serve our colleagues and customers better. We show it in a wheel because we believe that each of the components fuels the next, and it is a holistic, combinatory effect that delivers good outcomes. So I'm gonna jump into each of them if I could.
Pillar number one we started with was digital four years ago, and the why we started with digital is the following: It's the area where we were below our own internal expectations, probably roughly at parity with select key competitors, but well below our own expectations for our digital capabilities. Modern website, modern pricing tools, AI-fueled personalization, which you're gonna hear about from Neil. We weren't where we needed to be. Here's the best news of the RFG. The area that we were the most behind, we are now making the absolute most progress. We have moved the needle in the tech space further than any other functional area within the company, and Greg will communicate that to you through the voice of our customer in just a moment.
Neil's gonna cover each of the components on this page, as well as Victoria, because they each contribute to the work we're doing here, but I'm just gonna give you one example of what do we mean. When I arrived at the company four years ago, we, of course, had a modern website. It was really good at one component of interaction with their customers. We built lists for our customers, and those lists were the things that they commonly would buy, and we made it super easy for them to reorder. Click of one button, get everything on your list delivered on the next truck. It was so good they didn't really interact elsewhere on our site, and that is a problem. It means they weren't then going to buy things that they hadn't bought before. So here's just an example of how we have evolved.
Our list still exists, but it is now purely dynamic, and we will prompt the customer at checkout if there are actions we would like for them to consider, and I'll just give you two examples. If they're buying a national brand product and we can save them $15,000-$20,000 a year with a Sysco brand substitute, it'll pop up in a dialog box showing them the math. They, the customer, make the choice. We'll show you the example of what that looks like later on. Another example, if they're buying three or four things and there's a fifth thing that obviously goes with those products and it's not in the cart, it will pop it up dynamically.
Did you forget, insert here?" By making the list dynamic, personalized, using artificial intelligence and predictive modeling data, we are increasing basket size, we are increasing profitability, and we are increasing customer retention. It's just an example. Let me go to the next pillar, products and solutions. This is a food business, great food, great products at the right price. We're getting better and stronger every quarter, every year at expanding our assortment, to doing so profitably and ensuring that it's priced right. And again, we're gonna talk more about Asian and Italian in a moment. Within the supply chain, let me make this one just abundantly clear. Within the supply chain, it's deliver as promised. Be on time, deliver in full for what the customer orders, as we call it, OTIF, on time and in full. Without it, nothing else matters. Doesn't matter how many warehouses you have.
If you have electric trucks, makes no difference. What matters is on time and in full. And when you're the best in the industry at that activity, then you have the privilege of being able to do more disruptive things, and we'll talk about those.... Be consistent, be reliable, be available. The one thing I'll mention on this page that I'd draw your attention to is the supply chain capacity investments that Kenny and I have funded. As we've announced, we have 10 new distribution construction projects underway right now at Sysco. Let's just take a step back for a second on that statement. 10. That's more than the entire supply chains of most companies we compete against, sans two names you know well. You get outside that population, a reminder, the big three represent less than 40% of the market share.
The expansion we are currently underway is bigger in just the expansion than the supply chains of the other 60%. Why are we doing it? We're doing it so we can increase our ability to ship on time and in full, in expanding assortment at the right price to meet our customers' expectations. Last week, Greg and Neil were in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where we grand opened the first fold-out at Sysco in more than 10 years. That's one of the 10. Yes, Allentown is an important market, but I don't want you to think about it as Allentown. I want you to think about it as the vibrant Northeast. We have a facility right across the river in Jersey City, and it today ships into Western Jersey, it ships into Northeast Pennsylvania.
Allentown will pull all of that volume out of the Jersey City building, so Jersey City can focus on the boroughs. We have a huge opportunity to increase our business profitably in the boroughs, and it's just an example of the type of work we're doing. Those 10 buildings, strategically placed across the globe to high growth profit areas for Sysco. Let's talk about customer teams. We say over and over and over again that this is a relationships business. Greg's gonna give you a great testimonial in a minute of the type of relationships that happen in this space. Deep connections. To do that, though, you need to be physically present. We need our SC, sales consultants, in our top customer accounts on a weekly basis, AKA, why we are increasing the headcount of our population.
Neil is going to talk about tools that we are providing our SCs so that they can be even more productive on those visits. He'll also talk about two dynamic programs called Sysco Your Way and Perks that are undisputedly winning in the marketplace, and how we can scale those opportunities over this next LRP. Greg will talk about Total Team Selling and bring it home from a math perspective, what does it mean for our P&L? The last of the five pillars is Future Horizons. From the very beginning, Future Horizons meant two things. Number one was to take structural cost out of the business, to be relentless every day, continuous improvement, taking structural cost out to do two things. Thing one, to invest in the growth of this company for the long term.
Thing two, drop some of those things to the bottom line to expand our EBIT as a percent of sales. Drive out cost, invest in our future through a strong ROIC lens. In fact, the second compensation change that I'm communicating today is we added ROIC to our executive compensation to put our own money where our mouth is, tied to how important ROIC is. It's 37.5% of our compensation. Let me talk about the other half of pillar number five, and that's driving growth through our Future Horizons. One business that we don't talk a lot about is IFG. It's an export business that we own, based in Jacksonville, Florida, and we ship to over 80 countries around the world. Oftentimes, it's a domestic U.S. customer, like Cheesecake Factory, who has opened restaurants overseas, but we don't have operations in Dubai.
So we have partners in Dubai that we can ship to through IFG. This is a big business. It's very profitable, and we have a meaningful opportunity to grow it profitably. Both in the 80 countries that we're currently in, we're not even coming close to penetrating the amount of business we could do, and there are hundreds of countries that we don't yet ship to. And from a capital intensive biz, it's an asset-light business. We don't open any operations overseas. What we're doing is dry temperature containers, freezer, refrigerator, dry, getting that product overseas, clearing customs, clearing duties, clearing taxes, and the customer has confidence that what they ordered is what will arrive in a temperature-controlled manner. That's what IFG is. Asset light, huge opportunity for us to grow profitably. And there's more work we can do in the M&A space.
We're pleased and proud of the work that we've done to bolt on capabilities to this company, mostly in specialty, to be able to expand our reach, to be able to expand our service and product offering, and there's more that we can do in that space, and that will be a part of our financial algorithm. So as I step away from the RFG, I'd just like to cover two more topics with all of you this morning. Over the past four years, in addition to launching the RFG and dealing with all the tumult that's been in the environment, we've evolved our business and how we do our work. If you will, focusing on working smarter, modernizing things that needed to improve, and maintaining and leveraging the best of our past, being smarter about the how we work.
The next two slides I have highlight with some examples, what do I mean as I talk about this? I respect that the slide's probably too small for those in the back of the room. You don't have to read every word. I'm just going to highlight a couple of examples. What I've shown you here is functional areas on the left, current state in the middle, and then Harvey balls on the right that show satisfaction, if you will, of the progress and status of where we are. We'll highlight for you where we were, where we are, where we're going, on some very important elements of how we do our work. Let me start with merchandising. Roughly four years ago, merchandising was essentially distributed completely out into the field... Where we are today is we have a hybrid approach for merchandising.
Think about it as simple as the words on the chart say, commodity products bought at one desk globally. Victoria has an example of frozen shrimp. Well, she will quantify what does that mean to the P&L. Not going to steal her thunder. At the other end of the spectrum, this is a food business, and being quintessentially local matters. And we have a very large field merchandising organization that is focused on fresh and local, and they will remain local, because you need to be local with fresh products. Hybrid approach, and that was a huge amount of work to make that change to a global purchasing environment for commodity products. Operations. Operations remains local. The leaders of operations, vice presidents of operations, live in their communities. They interact with their end customers, and it will remain local.
But what's changed is they now all run a common playbook. Same order cut off, same delivery frequency rules, same customer interactions. They all ship on Saturdays. Huge work to get to common playbook, common execution, common customer experience, but led and managed locally. Technology, I mentioned this one earlier. It's the area where we've made the most progress. We had a set of very disparate tools four years ago. To contextualize that for you, we had 21 delivery apps in just the United States. We need one delivery app worldwide that helps our customers understand where their product is and what's on the truck, and we have made enormous progress in the tech space. A modern platform of common tools. That does not mean that we're going to host the exact same website in every country. It means we're going to have a modern website in every country.
It does not mean that our current U.S. pricing tool will be used in every country, but what it means is we will have a pricing tool that's fit for purpose for the size of the country. Think Panama's needs are very different than the U.S.'s needs. That's what we mean by a consistent, common, modern tech platform. And the last but not least, is we are ever increasingly a global business, and we have significantly improved our global work prioritization, mostly through the lens of Kenny's return on investment focus of prioritizing where does the next capital dollar go? It's not based on who asks first or who asks the kindest or the loudest. It's based on ROIC, and we have rigorous, disciplined, global project prioritization.
My last slide talks about, as you step back as a leader, I've been with the company for soon to be 4.5 years. What's working? What's not working? Where can you improve? What are you proud of? In the page, this is where we are. We have a lot to be proud of. We're a growth mindset team that's consistently focused on where and how we can be better. But I'm just going to give three examples of bigger wins, then I'll highlight four things that we're not satisfied with. On the biggest win side, the Global Operating Model. Greg Bertrand, who I'll introduce in a moment, is making meaningful progress on advancing Sysco's capabilities internationally to strengthen our capabilities. Number two is compelling M&A. Edward Don, the Greco business, our Coastal produce acquisitions.
Each of these acquisitions were return on investment positive, well above our hurdle rate, and they're allowing us and enabling us to expand our capabilities. Last but not least, is national sales. We're not going to talk a lot about national sales today, but let me be really very clear about one thing. We're killing it in national sales. Net $3 billion of incremental wins at higher than historical profitability rates. I don't care what anyone else says in the industry about what may or may not be happening in the competitive market. Mark it down, Sysco is killing it in national sales. The national sales matters. It's 50% of the cases that go on our trucks, helps us cover our fixed cost, helps us increase route density when we deliver to your independent local restaurant customers. National matters.
I couldn't be more proud of our national team. Let me go to the right-hand side of the page, because you need to wake up every day thinking about what you can do better. First is pricing agility. I mentioned before, we've never been better at managing gross margin rates, handling hyperinflation, followed by deflation, but we need to be better at responding in that hyperlocal moment when a customer says, "Yeah, but customer X is offering me Y." We need the ability to respond right then and there. Within guardrails, leveraging our tech capabilities, and we're going to get better on that. Fill rate. We're making a lot of progress. We get better every day, but we need to make even more progress on fill rate, and we're committed to do it, and we will do it. Overall, supply chain productivity.
Again, we're pleased with the progress that we're making week-over-week, quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year. We need to get back to 2019 levels of productivity, and we are baking in that productivity improvement into our long-range financial plan that we'll talk about with you today. Last but not least, is international's EBIT as a % of sales. It's one of the questions investors ask me all the time: "Hey, Kevin, great, you're growing top and bottom line international, but isn't it a drag on your overall EBIT as a % of sales?" Mathematically, today, yes, but we will grow international top and bottom line at a faster rate, which mathematically, what that means is that EBIT as a % of sales internationally, is going to be growing during the life of this financial algorithm that Kenny will cover with you later this morning.
The more important message is the following: There is no structural barrier internationally that will prevent each country we compete within to get to an appropriate and healthy EBIT as a percent of sales. Hard stop. Each country will not get there at the exact same pace and speed, but Greg Bertrand, Global CEO, is focused on getting each and every country up that profitability ladder.... So now, last but not least, each and every one of you has a decision to make vis-a-vis how you invest your money, obviously. So we would like to ask and answer this question of, why Sysco? Before I turn it over to the team, I want to close by saying the following about our industry and about our company. Food away from home is a healthy, vibrant business. Sysco specifically is growing profitably within that business, within that industry, with industry-leading financial metrics.
Kenny will talk about our balance sheet. Our balance sheet enables us to return value to our shareholders through a strong dividend, strong stock buybacks, all while investing for our business for the long term. A business that's led by a talented and highly engaged team, again, who's focused on the long term with a continuous process improvement mindset. For our next three years, the last bullet on the page, we have a financial algorithm with achievable targets that we are confident we can consistently deliver against over time. Kenny will talk a lot about that in his section. I'm honored to be here. I'm honored to serve our colleagues. I'm honored to serve our customers, helping us profitably grow the business. We look forward to answering your questions in just a few moments, but before we do, we've got a few friends that want to come up on stage.
If I could introduce Greg Bertrand. As he comes on up, I'll brag on him a little bit. Greg started in this industry 40 years ago at one of our customers. Approximately 35 years ago, he joined our company as a sales professional, and he's worked his way up, doing every single job in the company since then. There's nobody I'd rather work with in helping drive this business, now in his bigger, more expanded remit as our Global COO, than Greg Bertrand. Greg, come on up.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Kevin. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you today. I began my career, as Kevin said, 33 years ago as a sales consultant in Chicago. You probably caught a little bit of the Chicago brogue. You can't get it out of your voice there. I started as a sales consultant. Today, I steward the role of Global Chief Operating Officer, and for the next 30 minutes, I'm going to share our plans to achieve our goals, talk to you about why we're confident in delivering the three-year plan, and then also how we'll help build on our position as the market leader. More specifically, I'm going to talk about sales a lot.
So I think, as you know, starting out at Sysco as a sales consultant, it's only fitting that I'm going to spend most of my time today on how we'll change our growth trajectory, and not just in the States, but globally, over not just the next year, but the next three years. So I'll go deep into our plans to accelerate local growth in our biggest business, which is the U.S. Foodservice business here in the States. I'll share our growth plans for specialty, and as Kevin said, specialty is a really exciting business. Specialty is a business that's a differentiator in the second-largest channel in the US. It accounts for 27% of the $371 billion market, and it's only second in size to Broadline. I'll share our plans for international.
In international, another exciting business where our results are strong and improving each and every year with our new global operating model. Then lastly, it's not on my list here, but I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about operations. I might be a sales guy at heart, but if you're in this business, you also need to pay a lot of attention to operations. So I'll talk about operations in my last two-three minutes before I wrap up, about the progress we're making, and I think more importantly, how we'll continue to make progress over the next several years. As COO, when I look at Sysco's results versus our expectations or versus the competition, we're doing some things really well.
So we're growing top line, we're taking market share, we're growing profitably, but local case growth is an area that I'm not proud of today, and it's not meeting my expectations. So I'm going to spend a lot of the time in the sales area talking about how we change that. It's a journey. Those results don't magically appear overnight. When you ship over $1 billion a day in a business - $1 billion a week, I'm sorry, in a business, it's a big ship, so it takes a little bit of time to turn. But if I recall, or if I can maybe take you back to a point in time when we were struggling with supply chain operating expense, that was also a journey.
And so you think about coming out of COVID, we had snapback that came quicker than most people expected. We had the Great Resignation, and we struggled for a while with operational expenses. We put together a plan. Again, big ship, you can't turn it overnight, but what you're seeing today now is the fruits of that work, the efforts around retention, the efforts around network optimization, the efforts around productivity. It's all showing up in our financials, and we'll do the same with sales. So I'm going to spend a few minutes telling you how we'll do that. So improvement in the U.S. business, and this is specific to the U.S., this slide, although some of it does actually carry over into international. Specific to the U.S. business, we're going to focus on these four core actions, and these things all kind of work together.
They're not independent of one another. They work together to deliver not only strong growth, but profitable growth. So I'll start off with something that Kevin mentioned, which is increasing our investment in sales headcount. Why is that so important? It's important because it adds capacity to our sales organization. We know, and the numbers tell us, that when we're in our customers, visiting them, we grow share of wallet. We know that as we add sales headcount, we have more prospecting going on, and therefore, we have more customer acquisitions.... And a lot of people look over this small fact, which is that our existing sales force cedes those territories. And so you're also taking small pieces of business from some of our best, most experienced sales reps, and so you're freeing up their time now to go what they do best, and that's grow sales.
The performance management processes, tools, and technology that you'll hear about today ensure focused selling and performance optimization of this new headcount. You can't just put all these heads out into the field and not manage them, and so we'll make sure that they deliver the results that we need from them in order to get a return on that investment. Then Total Team Selling. Total Team Selling, and I know you've heard about team selling over the years, this is a little different model. It's not your father's version of team selling. Total Team Selling is a real unlock for Sysco. It takes our broad portfolio of business and enables us to meet all of our customers' needs, whether they want to buy from the broad line channel or whether they want to buy through the specialty channel.
And keep in mind, 27% of the U.S. market is specialty, so there is a strong need and a strong desire from our customer base to purchase certain products and have certain experiences that only specialty can provide. The new compensation model will tie all of this together, the behaviors and results, and it'll align profitable growth with how a sales professional is paid. And this is a key point, regardless of where that product ships from, whether it comes from the broad line company or whether it comes from the specialty company. And so while all four of these are really important, I'm going to go deep in two, and then I'll touch a little bit on our compensation program so that you can get a feel for what's changing.
So the two I'm going to go deeper in today are headcount, which I think is a really important pillar, and it's one of the core ones that will change our trajectory, and then Total Team Selling. And Total Team Selling is a big differentiator, one that I think at times, may be underestimated by the marketplace. Our salespeople are a differentiator. We know this, and so in the U.S. broadline business, we're going to add 1,200-1,500 net headcount over the next three years. That is a 20% increase in our total headcount, and we're already starting. Our starting point, our baseline, is the largest sales organization in foodservice distribution. Keep in mind, that's coming off the addition of 400 headcount this year.
When you take those four years together, that is more headcount than Sysco has ever added to the selling organization in our history over that period of time. If there's one learning that I have from the past several years, and you know, we all do what we think is right at the time, and then you reflect and look back, we should have added headcount back sooner. And so we were a little bit slow to add the sales headcount back and to grow our sales organization coming out of COVID. And so because of that, over the years, the capacity within our sales organization is not as robust as we want it to be, and so these investments will change that. We know that spending time with our customers increases share of wallet, and we don't just know that because we believe it.
We actually have measurements, okay? Measurements that tell us that's the fact. One of these measurements is the impact in visit growth ratios. And so with our CRM tool, we actually track the number of visits that we make to certain types of customers, the frequency of visits. And what we know is when we visit our customers one time per week, face-to-face, versus those that are visited less frequently, we see an additional 240 basis points of growth. So we know that it matters. We know that the additional headcount is going to lead to more face-to-face time, and that better face-to-face time with our customers will lead to greater share of wallet. The other thing we know from our CRM tool is that we track the number of prospects and the close rate.
And so we know that when we put a new sales consultant out there, they make between eight and 10 sales calls, prospect calls, for customer acquisition, on average, at about a 20% close rate. Think about what that means. When you put 400 reps out, like we did this past year, and when you put that 400-500 out in each of the next three years, they're making on average 4,000 more cold calls per week. That translates into local growth. Again, we cede those new territories, and that's a really important fact that we sometimes overlook. So that means that our existing sales organization of 6,000 strong also increases their capacity, and those are the more seasoned reps that have been in this business for a while and know how to get out there and get the job done.
The relationships that these SCs, the sales consultants, develop over time really matter. So what I want to take a minute, and if you give me grace here, I want to share a story with you. I came out, as Kevin said, I joined Sysco 33 years ago. I came out of the hotel business, and when I was in the hotel business, for a period of time, I was a buyer and food and beverage director, and I bought from Edward Don, who now is part of the Sysco family. But my sales rep from Edward Don, his name was Tony Miceli, and I loved Tony Miceli. Tony Miceli bailed me out when I was in a jam if I needed product. Tony Miceli would bring solutions to me when I couldn't figure out what I needed, but I had a problem to be solved.
Tony Miceli was always fair with me, and I trusted him. He was someone that I trusted as a business resource. He was a business partner, and he needed to be competitive, but because of the relationship we had and the trust that I had with Tony, he didn't always have to be the cheapest. There was a value proposition that Tony provided because of all the things that he did that differentiated him from the other sales reps in the business... Those relationships get stronger over time, and they, those relationships actually go from business to personal relationships at times. So Tony was at my children's baptisms. Tony was at my wedding. I went to all of Tony's kids' birthday parties. We actually became friends, trusted business partners, and trusted friends.
And that tremendous relationship that the sales reps build leads to you getting the lion's share of the business. It is still a relationship business. There's other things that need to happen, right, for that value proposition to come to life, but people buy from people that they trust, and people buy from people that they like. Yes, you need to have the service. Yes, you need to have the products. Yes, you need to be competitive, but that sales rep relationship is incredibly important, and that's the value that a sales rep adds when it comes to the buying decisions. Sales rep relationships with the customers make a difference. So I want to draw your eyes to the right side of the slide, and I'm sharing with you here a Voice of Customer to NPS scores that we have at Sysco. Sales rep relationship and digital experience.
Under the score column that you see here is what customers tell us about Sysco. To the right is the delta versus competitors. So when we survey customers, they're buying from competitors, we also score them, and then we compare that to Sysco's NPS score. This is consistent. This isn't a one-off. That customers tell us our sales reps are the best. On a scale of 10, which is what this is based off of, we religiously score approximately a nine out of 10, and we score almost a full point higher than the competitor's sales organization. We're 90 basis points higher in this last quarter. Then when you look at the digital score, and that digital score carries increasing importance. Now, 80% of orders are placed online, and so that digital experience is incredibly important.
I kind of view the digital tools that we have as an extension of the sales rep. The sales rep can only be there so often, but when the customer's online and they're shopping and the tool is suggesting Sysco-branded products, and the tool is suggesting that there's products that they should be buying based on the cuisine that they're in, the cuisine type that their restaurant is, it's like a sales consultant selling when the true sales consultant can't be there. It's an extension of the sales rep. Customers are telling us that we have the best sales reps and the best digital experience, and as Kevin said, we're very proud of this one because we invested a lot of time, effort, and money in improving our digital experience. And what, what we're most proud of is that we're now scoring 85 basis points than the other competitors.
And that, for us, is a really big achievement. So again, we'll grow headcount by over 20% in each of the next. In the next three years, I'm sorry. That'll increase our sales capacity and supporting this with a highly rated digital experience. This is just one pillar of those four core actions as we invest in the sales organization. The next thing that I want to talk about is Total Team Selling. And Total Team Selling, again, it's different than what team selling was. What team selling was at Sysco, was you had a sales consultant that worked with a new business developer, that was supported by specialists that had expertise in categories, all working as one team to go into account and to grow sales by providing customers with solutions, similar to what Tony Miceli did for me.
The total team selling is about leveraging our one-of-a-kind portfolio of businesses to meet a customer's every need. There is a reason that customers want to buy from the specialty channel. And that's why it's 27% of the U.S. market. Sysco, as an organization, has more specialty solutions than any of our competitors. So we have Edward Don, our most recent one, for supplies and equipment. We have Greco for Italian. We have the largest produce company out there in FreshPoint. We have the largest specialty meat and seafood company out there with Buckhead and Newport, and it creates an unbeatable value proposition. So again, you've heard about team selling before, so what's different now? What is the unlock? Well, the first thing that we're doing to unlock it is we began to use the same CRM tool across businesses.
So if you want a sales organization to work together, you want to connect them, right? So they can see the opportunities within that account. They can communicate within that account. They can give each other a heads-up when they come in the back door and realize that, hey, a competitor just delivered these products that my peer was getting. It allows them to collaborate because it connects them as one team. The next thing that we did is we made all of our specialists agnostic, and we're following suit now with agnostic new business developers as we start this fiscal year. So what does agnostic mean in this business? It means that we'll meet a customer's needs, utilizing our entire portfolio, agnostic to whose P&L it's recorded on. That was one of the biggest hurdles to connecting the organization together and bringing Total Team Selling to life.
So how do we do this? Well, for those of you that maybe worked in sales or know sales organizations well, usually they'll chase the money, right? And so one of the ways that we did that is we changed the compensation programs to align the new business developers, to align the specialists and to align the sales consultants, so that regardless of which solution the customer wanted, it was their choice. And we didn't try to steer them to the solution that maybe benefited the person making the sale, but rather steered them to the solution that the customer wanted, and everyone is compensated in some way, shape, or form when we do that.... I'm gonna touch base on a future compensation change, and that compensation change will enforce this behavior, and it'll incent them even more to unlock the Total Team Selling opportunity.
Think of the impact this change will have. To me, it's pretty simple. We have 6,000 broadline sales associates. Today, when they're out there, they're selling a broadline solution, right? Now we have 6,000 sales associates that are speaking to their current customers, existing customers, and if they don't buy specialty from the broadline, and they don't buy specialty from a Sysco solution, they are now making a warm introduction and leveraging that existing relationship that they have to close the deal, to grow Sysco sales across our entire portfolio, and that's the unlock. So now that you know what Total Team Selling is and how it differs from team selling, now here are the early results, and we are really pleased with the early results because they're very compelling.
So what we've proven is that when we use our entire portfolio of businesses within a customer, our share of wallet grows exponentially. So here's what you're looking at here. On the bottom, the Sysco only is average sales when we go in with a broadline solution. What we know is when we introduce one of our specialty companies into that relationship, and we're selling them through broadline and through specialty, that business grows on average by three times, 300%. Interestingly enough, when we introduce a second specialty solution, 'cause we have many to introduce, it grows by six times. Now, we expected that we would see specialty sales accelerate because what we're really doing is finding existing customer opportunities where they're buying from a specialty company that's not Sysco. We're making the introduction, and we're selling them.
So we knew that specialty would be the benefactor of much of this growth, but we were pleasantly surprised to see what happened with broadline. Look at the blue line as we introduce one specialty company and two specialty companies. We're pleasantly surprised by how our broadline sales also grow when we bring that whole portfolio forth into the customer. So all boats rise when we bring that portfolio value proposition forth with our customers. Now we're working to double down on that and double down on what we've learned here, which is we have an unbelievable opportunity. Today, we have 5,000 customers buying through this Total Team Selling model. We began deploying this new model to start the fiscal year, and we've slowly been ramping up. We're up to 22 regions today. We have 31 regions.
Okay, so we're up to 22 regions today, and we've identified a substantial number of additional targets, a ton of targets that are out there. We use the data to cultivate those opportunities, and then we go out, and we work on them. Customers that buy from a specialty company, but not a Sysco specialty company, where they're also buying from a broad line company, and we're the broad liner. Our close rate on these warm calls, because they're not cold calls, we're bringing in somebody that we have a relationship already, and we're bringing in a sister company. Our close rate on those is 50%. It's 2.5x the close rate that we see on a regular cold call. And I think about it, it makes sense, right? I talked about Tony Miceli.
If Tony Miceli walked in when I was in the hotel business and said, "Hey, here's my friend Susie, and she works at XYZ company, and I'd like you to give her some time and talk to her about what she has to offer," you know, Tony's endorsement would carry weight with me, and I would give that person time, and that's exactly what we see happening. So these early results, we launched this program, are really, really promising, and I think it's a perfect example of when we unlock our portfolio, how one plus one equals three. So we have an opportunity, as Kevin mentioned, to double our specialty business, and doubling that specialty business to get to the Sysco share would be $10 billion. And I think more importantly, it's a competitive advantage 'cause this is an opportunity that our competitors don't have.
What took us two and a half decades to build. Next, I'm gonna touch on compensation. So as Charles Munger said, "Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome." Well, we've been on a journey, and we've been evolving our compensation program. When we went through COVID, we went to more of a base-type program for our sales associates, and we've slowly been bringing it back to more of an incentive-based program. I'm gonna hit on three key points here of the compensation change, okay, and I'm not gonna go deep into all the details, but I'll hit on what I think are really the most important three points. First, there's gonna be a slight remix of the base versus the commissions and bonuses. So why would we do this?
We're doing it so that sales consultants have more skin in the game, and we're doing it so that they're paid more based on performance with unlimited earnings potential. Your best sales reps, that's the type of compensation program they want, and they will chase the money. Secondly, on comp, we're emphasizing not just growth, but we're emphasizing profitable local growth. So we're incenting them to go after a certain kind of customer, that local customer, and we've added a GP dollar growth measurement in because at Sysco, it's not just growth for the sake of growth. We need them to grow profitably in these accounts. And then lastly, as you hear throughout the day about our plan, you know, this compensation program is much better aligned with our plan. They can make extra money for selling Sysco brand, for participating in total team selling and for new business.
One thing I know from my 33 years at Sysco and coming up in sales, if you put the carrot out there, they chase it, and they chase it hard. These changes are good for our colleagues. I do think they're good for our customers also, and they're certainly good for Sysco's P&L... Next, I want to shift and go a little bit deeper into our specialty portfolio. You heard about team selling. Well, the specialty portfolio is what enables it to come to life. Again, the specialty channel is big, the second largest to broadline in 27% of our $371 billion U.S. market. Back in 1999, 2000, Sysco entered the specialty business with two of our largest acquisitions.
We acquired FreshPoint back in 1999, which is our big produce distribution specialty company, and we acquired Specialty Meat and Seafood Companies, Buckhead and Newport. It was just the beginning of the expansive specialty business that we built today. Specialty is a competitive advantage. You think about the specialty channel, it is incredibly fragmented. Incredibly fragmented. It is hard to find a specialty company that has multiple distribution points. What took us 2.5 decades to build can't easily be emulated overnight. Today, we have 4 $1 billion platforms. Think about that in specialty. A couple of those platforms are not just $1 billion, but 3+. These are big specialty companies.
With the recent acquisition of Edward Don, as Kevin mentioned, we're over $9.3 billion in revenue, and our market share has almost doubled from 6%-10% since 2021. So it might be easy to look and say, "Hey, that's because of all the acquisitions that you've done." And, yes, we've done a lot of acquisitions, but we're very proud about the growth that we're seeing in our specialty companies, the organic growth. So while acquisitions like Greco and Edward Don have certainly added to our portfolio, we've organically grown revenue by 65% and grown operating income by 180%+ since 2021.
Now, you could say, "Well, yep, that's some of that's the bounce back from COVID." True, but we are well exceeding 2019 levels of sales and operating income with our specialty business, and we still have under 10% share. So imagine what Total Team Selling can do with this portfolio of businesses when you have an entire sales organization, 6,000 strong, out there calling on opportunities, leveraging their relationships with identified prospects, that we've used data to know that they're buying from specialty and under a new compensation model, where everybody is running hard to grow sales using our entire portfolio. The specialty business, as Kevin said, it is a growth vector, it is unique, and it's something that we're super excited about in the future. This is a specialty map, and we pull these maps up for all our specialty companies.
The reason I put them up here today is to show you that not only do we have the opportunities that I described within our existing footprint, we have a lot of opportunity to fill in white space. So you see the Greco business, the FreshPoint business, Buckhead and Newport. So whether we fill that in through M&A, through new buildings or expansions or new capabilities like Grab & Go, one of our recent acquisitions, Coastal, they have Grab & Go capabilities that we don't have at Sysco. So they're packaging the cut fruit cups that you see so frequently in, like, BNI or in some of the hotel lobbies where they sell the little cafe. They do yogurt cups, they do sandwiches, wrapped sandwiches, and we're gonna be expanding that Grab & Go concept also.
We're opening up three new processing facilities within existing footprints in order to get into the Grab & Go business. Next, I want to shift to the global operating model, and earlier this year, I assumed expanded responsibility for our international business, that included Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, in addition to Canada. So I'd had Canada from about a year ago. And the global operating model is really cool because what it's enabling us to do is bring the best ideas to all corners of the globe. And you would think that it's, wow, the U.S. is bringing great ideas to international. It cuts both ways. Every time I go out in the field and go on a trip, I'm bringing ideas, and I'm bringing back ideas that we can implement in the States.
There are big opportunities to lift and shift the programs that we see success in, in the States and bring them into our international businesses. I listed several of them on the right-hand side here. These programs enable us to build on our number one position in countries like Canada, Costa Rica, Ireland, Great Britain, and you heard Kevin talk about some of the success that we're seeing in a few of these countries, where we're growing share, we are, we're number one in the market, and we're growing profitably. So early success in Sysco Your Way, which Neil Russell's gonna talk about, is one that I want to go deeper on.
We're bringing things, though, like labor planning to these markets, strategic sourcing, that you'll hear a little bit more from Victoria on, and we're driving really strong top and bottom-line growth. So I want to share just a couple quick examples. You heard Kevin touch on Total Team Selling. So for example, you heard what we can do in the U.S. with Total Team Selling. Many people don't know, but we already have these capabilities in Europe. We just don't have Total Team Selling yet. So we have produce capabilities in Great Britain, Canada, Ireland. We have meat and seafood opportunities in Great Britain, Canada, and Sweden. We have a strong beverage business that sells spirits and wine in Ireland. The point is, we have all the pieces to the puzzle. We just need to put it together. We've already acquired the companies. We have them.
We need to bring them into the Total Team Selling model. The work we're doing internationally on Sysco Brand is further along, and there's tremendous upside in this area, too. These are our brand numbers on the left-hand side of this slide, and Sysco Brand accounts for a little more than, a little less than half the cases sold in U.S. BL's local case mix. You can see the brand for some of the different countries. Sysco Brand is more profitable than the national brands, and that same profit profile holds true internationally. When we acquired these companies, we grew through acquisitions, and quite frankly, they had a lot of different disparate legacy brands. We're now bringing those brands together to grow. One interesting observation is Sysco Brand and a business's profitability improves with time. The U.S. Broadline business is what we were founded on, the highest brand.
Canada was the next company we acquired when we acquired Circa, the next highest Sysco brand. Europe, with Brakes and a few other acquisitions, the next highest Sysco brand, and so on and so forth. So we know the play, and we can execute on it. The value of increasing our Sysco brand penetration in local with international to the U.S. levels at 46% is $100 million of incremental profit for Sysco. And then we have all those pages on all those items that ran down the right side of that previous page that we can also lift and shift and bring internationally to improve our profitability. In my opening, I mentioned the supply chain journey, and I want to touch on just a few things here in my closing minutes.
How we drove the improvement, how we'll continue to drive results over the next three years. As I said, I'm a salesperson at heart, but I love operations, too, and it's such an important part of our business, and I'm very proud about what we accomplished over the last 12-18 months operationally. Our progress is a result of building greater rigor and discipline into our operational areas, and so we address the KPIs that matter most. And so it's, it's nothing revolutionary, right, that we did, except we're being brilliant at the basics, and that's what operations is about. Doing those same things that drive the KPIs, that drive the customer service levels, that drive your costs lower because productivity is going up, all those great things, and doing it consistently. That's what drives operation costs per piece down.
So we created standardized processes to improve customer service levels, and the retention was key, because without retention, none of these other things happen. We trained the teams. We brought them all in for training. We brought a greater focus to the most important KPIs versus trying to focus on 50 different ones. We picked a handful of KPIs that we knew mattered and we knew would drive the results. So it's really disciplined execution is what it is. Leadership, knowing what's important, knowing how we expect them to get it done, and executing in a more efficient manner. Again, nothing revolutionary except the results. The beauty is derived from consistent execution of the playbook. Easy to say, hard to do. When you look at our results, we're, we're pretty pleased with them.
You know, we've made and continue to make great progress on each of these five pillars, and we've been posting some pretty impressive improvements over the past year. We know that it all starts with retention, so we're most proud of our retention numbers within our organization and the improvement, and there's still a long ways to go with retention. But when you retain your employees, their productivity goes up. There is a curve that we study, and the longer a warehouse selector or the longer a driver is with the company, the greater productivity, the greater accuracy, the fewer injuries, less shrink. It all goes together, and it all starts with retention. So what we're seeing is, as we put in programs in place to improve retention, we're seeing the other programs rise with it, and we're seeing better results.
So imagine what we could do in a more normalized business environment like we're in now, and when you pump more volume through the buildings, because in our business, volume is a good thing. I have a really high level of confidence in our ability to improve. So while we're consistently showing improvement, and we have consistently shown month-over-month improvement in these metrics throughout the year, we're proud of the progress, but we still have an opportunity. We still aren't back to 2019 levels. And so what I'm trying to say there is there's a lot of upside here, even though you see this great progress that we're making, and this is an area where I really think we've caught our stride, and we're now taking our learnings, not just to the States, but we're lifting and shifting some of that and taking it internationally.
The labor model, which was a huge addition for Sysco and really helped us as we plan labor differently than we have in the past, we've lifted and shifted that, and they're using it in Canada, they're using it in every one of the countries in Europe, and we're using it in Costa Rica today. Great opportunity. So as I opened with, we are committed to growing local sales globally, and we have a solid plan. Our specialty businesses are a competitive advantage, a competitive advantage because the competitors don't have them. And to build what Sysco's built over 2.5 decades is really tough to do. Total Team Selling is going to deliver great top-side growth as well as bottom-line growth. As Kevin mentioned, international is a growth vector, and it's one of the areas I'm most excited about.
As we lift and shift these initiatives that are proven in the U.S., we're finding that, wow, many of them work internationally. We'll continue to perform in supply chain, capitalizing on the improved retention as well as the new discipline and rigor that's now a part of BAU, how we do business every day. And all these areas will contribute to us delivering on the three-year plan that Kenny's going to cover as we close out the day. So I appreciate you coming today. Thank you for your time and attention, and I'm going to turn it over to Neil Russell, our Senior VP and Chief Administrative Officer. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everyone. Good to be with you. Good to see a lot of familiar faces out in the crowd. You know, I realized this morning that somehow I managed to pick out exactly the same outfit as the photos on the screen. That was not the intent, like, that was not the goal, but please don't tell my family. They're going to be so embarrassed. Really appreciate the chance to be with all of you here today. You're going to have a great lunch from our culinary team in just a couple hours, and to all of you online, appreciate you joining as well. You just heard about this awesome core business from Greg.... 54+ years of industry leadership, the best sales force in the industry by far.
What I'm excited to be able to spend a few minutes with you here today to talk about is our Recipe for Growth strategy and the initiatives that we layer on top of that core business. The initiatives that allow that share gaining access and that nimble capability to really advance and increase the moat we have, compared to that wide, fragmented industry that we compete in, that Kevin talked to you about. I'm going to start here with that Recipe for Growth strategy that Kevin mentioned to you. This has obviously been developed over the last couple of years, and it's really evolved with multiple vectors of growth for us.
You're gonna hear how this all works together across all five of these pieces, and while we've got tremendous momentum with our chain accounts, and we really do, and Kevin mentioned that, what I'm gonna be spending more time talking to you about here this morning are the pieces of this that drive our local business. So I'm gonna start here in the customer teams pillar, and I'm gonna share with you progress on our Sysco Your Way program and our Sysco Perks program, how they've matured, how we're doing, and what's next in those key programs for us. Then, I'm gonna go into the digital pillar, and I'm gonna describe to you progress we've made by using customer-specific data in a program we call Personalization.
This has really been a big advancement for us over the last couple of years, and I'm gonna give you more insight as to how that program is performing and the value it really brings to us. We have more than 200,000 independent-type customers that have access to this type of program for us, and it's really helping us expand our assortment and go to the next level. At Sysco, we've got the broadest SKU set by far, but I'm also gonna talk to you today about how we're expanding that SKU set through a program we call Marketplace. A third-party shopping platform in our own platform that allows us to expand that SKU assortment at a very low cost and a very high profit rate. That'll be within this part of the pillar, too.
Then finally, I'm gonna dive into the future horizons pillar a little bit, and I'm gonna talk to you about a very important topic in how we grow responsibly through sustainability. And how we can create value from our values by creating these stickier relationships with our customers, many of whom have these goals that they are committed to, and how we can help them grow in a profitable and responsible way. Let's start with Sysco Your Way. As I like to say, this is our game-changing program that many of you are familiar with. You've heard us talk about this program for a little while now. And this is how we serve restaurant-dense neighborhoods instead of a customer-by-customer delivery route. So think about a neighborhood as a restaurant-dense area, 50-75 locations that we can serve in one area versus stop by stop.
We provide key service metrics to customers in this area. It's a high-level of service. You've got late order cut-off. You've got dedicated sales consultant. You've got dedicated driver, and you've got a lot of other additional white-glove services that allow us to serve you at a much higher level than smaller, less well-capitalized distributors are able to perform. Our customers are absolutely thriving off this delivery flexibility, and they really appreciate the high-touch service that we bring to them. It's from a team of dedicated sales professionals, like what Greg was just walking you through. So yes, our sales consultant's the key to that neighborhood, but also these specialists, think protein specialists, produce specialists, these key attributes that other distributors don't have as much of, that are part of that family, and also a tremendous culinary team, some of whom you're gonna meet at lunch today.
All part of the package that we're bringing to that neighborhood. It really helps customers in that neighborhood, because you think about a restaurant and how they're trying to run their operation, and they're trying to solve a lot of problems. They're trying to keep product fresh. They've got small storage rooms, small refrigerators or freezers, and the Your Way program with this high touch level of service, helps them solve a lot of those issues, including managing their inventory later into the evening. And for me, this came to life when I was talking to a customer a few weeks ago, and the customer's got a great operation going, and they had a really good day. You know, they had a good run in the evening, particularly through the dinner rush.
The restaurant manager was telling me, he was able to go through the pantry and the kitchen towards the evening as they were finishing up their dinner hour, and he needed to order some replacement product, and he was clicking and going, and he liked that flexibility and the ability to do that, particularly for what we call a key center of the plate item, and for them, it was chicken, fresh chicken. You think about a product like that in the inflation, you know, that they've had to deal with, and the fluctuations in price over the last couple of years, and it's been hard for them to build up inventory and to make good predictions of what to do with a key item like that. But with Sysco Your Way, serving him, he said he didn't have to worry about that.
He knew it was 9:00 P.M., he could still place the order, and the truck was gonna be there at 10:00 A.M. the next morning. He didn't have to stock up as much, and he had the reliability of that service model, which was huge for him. In addition to that, he's got a really great concept. He's got a bit of a queue in the front of his store, and he wants to talk to the Sales Consultant about what to have on display in that queue to sell to customers as they come through, and the Sales Consultant is there every day in the neighborhood. In fact, one of our neighborhoods, we were meeting the other day and talking, and the Sales Consultant is referred to as the mayor in that neighborhood, because they're knocking on the door all the time talking to these customers.
This customer was talking to our sales consultant about carbonated flavored waters, a really key trend, a big item, and he wanted more information from our sales consultant. What kind should I have? What flavors should I have? Pineapple and blueberry, by the way. What do I need to do? I want a sales consultant to help me. I want to have digital ordering capability late at night, all in one package for him, and he's growing as a result of that. So over the last year, we've really advanced the program, and we're proud of the progress that we have. We're now live in 6 countries. We've activated more than 500 neighborhoods across the program, and we're seeing double-digit growth in each of the countries that we are serving.
You know, as I look at the program and try and figure out different ways to measure it, I think about it in a 2-by-2 matrix that you see here in the middle, on the left-hand part of the page. There's two ways to look at the program and the progress that we're making. So first is share of wallet. You know, are we further penetrating with the customers we're already serving? Are we increasing that share of wallet with the customers we're serving? The second is the number of stores in the neighborhood. Walking around, knocking on the doors every day, what do you need? What do you need? What do you need? Are we winning more new accounts as a result of that?
As you can see on the page, you know, the short answer to both of those is, yes, we are winning in both of those key important metrics. Thus far, we've gained 10 points share of wallet and eight points unit share in these neighborhoods that we're serving, and that's good. We're pleased, you know, to have that progress. But what I get really excited about is the amount of runway that we've got on those numbers to continue to improve over time. That unit share, that number could be 50. That share of wallet, that number could be 70. And that's not just a number we're making up and saying it could be that number.
We say 70 because we actually have 70% share of wallet with some of our key customers today, and we know with a service model like this, that we can absolutely obtain those types of numbers. So the program is doing well, and it's exceeding our expectations. And I think about, you know, really two elements to the program that make it difficult for others to compete with. One is you got to have the route density, you know, that we have to make it successful. So a smaller competitor is going to be hard to duplicate that type of route density, and that's a success factor for us for sure. And two, is it's expanding the moat of these new customer access points because we're there, because we got the density, because we're already delivering in the neighborhood.
We've got the access to restaurants we may not yet already be serving, and you see that proved out in the data that I just walked you through. So we've got about $400 million of incremental value in sales that we've generated thus far from the program. So it's been very successful. And over the next three years, the time frame of the algorithm that Kenny's going to walk you through, we're looking at 20% growth for the program on a CAGR basis over that three-year time frame. And that's going to come in three ways. Like I just said, further penetrating current accounts, increasing that share of wallet, increasing the unit share of that neighborhood, like I talked about, and then third, going to additional neighborhoods. We're not done rolling out the program, particularly if you think internationally.
Big opportunity for us to continue to roll it out. We're already in a few countries, in some cities, but plenty of room for us to grow there. The program was built with a $1 billion target in mind, and we've absolutely got line of sight to that based on those numbers. So let me go to Perks next. And as a reminder for you, Perks is the industry's first real loyalty program. When I say that, I mean data-infused loyalty program, not just a simple, "Okay, I'll give you a discount on this," you know, with a sales consultant shooting from the hip a little bit. This is a data-enriched program. And one of the key benefits of a member being in our Perks program is, again, flexible deliveries. The customer can select the delivery that works for them, including next-day service, if they desire.
You think about the value of loyalty programs, it's the fact that we offer that to them that brings the value. So we offer it, and that's got this much value for the customers. And the number of customers that use that are this many, but they know it's there. They know it's there, they know they're part of the club, and that's really, really important to them. The Perks members, they also get promotions. Particularly, a key item for them is a coupon that they can use once a month based on an order minimum for a certain amount off. Buy more, save more type offer. And we all are members of loyalty programs where that happens to us.
We are in a hotel program, you're in an airline program, you're at the silver level, you're trying to get to the gold level, and they're saying, "Hey, here's the value of the gold level for you." That's the type of idea of the coupon that we're offering them. But we also offer them a whole suite of restaurant solutions that we don't charge them for. Menu analysis, menu profitability, social media help, photos for your social media program, the types of skills that our marketing team and other teams have that our independent local customers really value. And if you think about being an entrepreneur, running your own restaurant, it's really hard, and you don't particularly have staff dedicated to social media. You don't have a finance team dedicated, you know, to your menu, but we've got that for you, and we bring that value to these key customers.
So in addition to that, you know, we'll bring them surprise and delight, other type value promotions as part of being in the club. So it's obviously a very important customer set for us. They're large customers of ours, they're profitable customers of ours, and they're highly engaged customers of ours. And as you think about the combination of those factors, guess what? Yes, of course, they are much less likely to churn out in the business because they're part of the club and part of the loyalty program. We got about 12,000 customers that are in the program right now, and that represents 16% of our overall independent sales, which is from 6% of that customer set. So that shows the value of that customer base for you.
Why does the number of customers matter for us, and why are we thinking about that and driving on that? Well, because the more customers you have, the more data you have to work with. As I said, really, the art behind the curtain here on this loyalty program is managing that data. And if we've got a good, strong set of customers, we've got data on them, and we can manage that data to our advantage. We've got more data than anyone else in the industry, particularly for these very important, very profitable customers. Now, this isn't new. You know, think about some retail-type industries that as consumers, we're all part of, you know, retail grocers, as I said, airlines, hotels, and think about how they use their loyalty programs to really drive value for their business. That's what we're doing here.
That's different for our more B2B-like industry. This is an example, and I've got a few of them, where we're a little more B2C-like in our capabilities and management of these programs. Now, at Sysco, we've got high NPS, Net Promoter Scores, particularly compared to our peers, which means our customers are about two times more likely to be promoters of Sysco than our big broadline peer customers are of them. And that's a huge point, and it's really important to us, and it speaks to the service and execution that Greg just walked you through. And if you look at comparisons of some big, you know, names and key competitors that are out there, think grocery, retail, think other B2B-type businesses.
You know, this says a lot about a B2B distributor and where we sit in terms of NPS score, and particularly compared to other delivery companies, which is a high bar, right, for NPS. We compare pretty well to some of these big brand names. Now, for Sysco Perks, it's even way better than that. Our best local customers, this really important customer set, they're more likely to be promoters of their relationship with Sysco, outpacing some of these others, and particularly the broadline peers, by more than three times. This speaks to, to us, to the value of the program and the benefits these customers are receiving from us and, yes, then how much more sticky they will be in the relationship and the trust, like Greg's story that he told you about. So we're really excited about the program. We're seeing some really good success from it.
We've had about $200 million of incremental revenue since the launch of the program, and the program continues to drive strong performance as a key retention play for us. This program, think about retention of these key, big, important customers. This program is going to grow at 11% per year through FY 2027 as a contribution to the algorithm Kenny will walk you through. We continue to evolve it. We can see a path on the value of this one to $500 million. So our top focus, as I was saying, is to get additional members into the program. We've got a target of about 25,000-30,000 members, would be a good ideal target for us. And when we get to that level, that'll be about 20%-25% at that point of our local revenue.
We're also going to continue to enhance the program by more defining those tiers that I was talking about and taking the program more globally across our enterprise. Let me talk to you about our third program for today, and that is what we call Personalization or Perso for short. And to me, this is the program that is perhaps the least understood about the value of this data that I'm telling you about and how we bring value to our customers and how we grow, and how we leverage that data to turn into that long-term profitable growth. I really think this, this program for us is a bit of the hidden gem that we've had in our portfolio. We've been investing in this program for the last couple years. This is not something you can just buy off the shelf.
It's a design program for our customers, not just any given customer. And with that investment in the program, a couple of thoughts for you on that. It would take a smaller peer a few years to try and catch up with the type of sophistication I'm about to walk you through. And even if they do try that, we're going to continue to invest in the program and continue to advance it going forward. And for some of the smaller ones, they're not even going to be able to really do this type of program because they don't have the data on the volume of customers that we have.
So just taking a step back for you and describing it, personalization is really the process to use customer data to create a personalized offer for a customer where they are, when they want it, which incentivizes their buying behavior with us. Are you a late-night email customer? We know that, and we got you. We'll take care of that. We know to send you an email later at night. Are you an early morning texter, like Greg Bertrand, sending me texts early in the morning? We know that, too, and we got you. We can send you a text early in the morning. This is part of the AI program that Kevin was mentioning earlier today, and a sophistication that some retailers have in their type of business, but our B2B, more traditional competitive set, does not really have the capability to do.
So think about the buying pattern of maybe an Italian restaurant that we have in our portfolio. They're buying the sauce, they're buying the pasta. We know what's on their menu because we've got that in our data set, and so we're going to make them an offer on the olive oil, because we know that's something they should be buying from us, but they're not yet buying from us. And this program will create a very specific offer to them, that customer, on that item. It's an example of, again, how we're becoming a little more B2C-like in a more traditional B2B industry. And I think a key point on personalization that we want to be sure to understand is that... And we can do this by the thousands like that.
A more traditional salesperson at a different type of company, they know 100 SKUs really well, and they can make good value propositions for a customer on 100 SKUs. We can do this by the thousands instantly through that type of data learning science that we have, and that's the true magic. The incremental sales activity from the program are strong. You can see here on the page $450 million as a result of the program. And this program, we've got pegged to grow at a rate of 15% across this multi-year period, also on a path to reach value of $1 billion. So what would be next, for a program like Perso, and how can we keep growing it? Well, we're also going to take it global. We're starting that work in Canada right now, as a matter of fact.
Let me show you how these capabilities come to life, and I've got five restaurants on the screen here to kind of walk you through a bit of a demo. Each of these customers are different. They're unique. Some of them are new to Sysco, some of them are new to the restaurant scene, but they're all different from each other, and that's kind of the point of the program. You've got an Italian restaurant there on the far left. It's a high-end Italian restaurant. It's a great restaurant. It's a brand-new restaurant and so therefore, also a new customer to Sysco. So they're figuring out their menu. They're trying new things. We've got new opportunities to work with them. Conversely, the Asian restaurant next to them, that's a restaurant that's more mature. It's been around. They've tried different things on their menu.
They know what they like, they know what doesn't work, but they're also a new customer to Sysco. Then I've got three burger restaurants further to the right there. The first is the high-end one. It's really more like a steakhouse, right? I mean, this is a steakhouse, and they got a burger on the menu. The kind of place maybe you're going to for a business lunch and you're going to order the salad because you're with colleagues, and you're like, "All right, I got to order the salad." I'm the guy that's going to order the burger, and plus, I got to order the burger because Kenny is not going to approve a steak for me on a lunch, you know, expense report. But I'm going to get the burger, and it's a good burger at a restaurant like this.
The burger place next to that, that's the more casual, okay, your family's going on the weekend, right? You're out and about. You're shopping around, Saturday afternoon, you're stopping for lunch. Golden Buns is where you're bringing your family for a burger there. And they've got high affinity for branded products. On the right, Burger Town, this is your college town, low-priced burger joint. This is where my daughter and her crew is going when they wake up on Saturday around lunch before the big SEC football game, and they're value. They're looking for deals. Each of these customers, totally different, right? Each with totally different needs. And what I want you to think about as I go through some of the examples is, this is any given Tuesday for my team.
This isn't the type of thing where we create a deal and just put it there, and that's the deal for the year, right? Or that's the deal that they get, and, and we leave it alone. Constant churn, constant opportunities, constant ideas.... With this, again, times the thousands. So in addition to offering a specific customer, a specific value play on a specific item on a specific day, we can also, through the program, do a broad-based offer. So I'll show you an example of a specific offer for a specific customer. We can also, at the same time, do a broader-based deal. Mother's Day is coming up, and we got a Sysco brand item we want to offer. We could send it to all three of those burger restaurants, as well as doing specific ones to each of them.
Think about that combination of possibilities and ideas as we walk through it. Let's start with the restaurant Kenny won't let me go to, Del Fran's, the high-end burger restaurant, the steakhouse there. This is what they see when they log in. When they log in to our digital platform, we call it Sysco Shop, this is what we'll present to them. It's cuisine specific. It's suggestions for them that might help them with ideas and suggestions. And even though it's the steakhouse, we know they've got the high-quality burger on the menu, so we're going to give them this splash page this week. And this is the opportunity for them, and then see the specific items underneath that mini splash page that we're trying to draw their eye to. This is not static.
It's data-informed based on their buying patterns, based on the profitability, based on the growth, and based on what we may be pushing to them. So think about some of the acquisitions we've talked about here this morning, Greco or Don. Maybe you've got some new products that have come in. This is an opportunity for us to place that in front of them. So specific to them and what they see here, and of course, as you can see, what we're trying to indicate to you, it's both, you know, a web model and a digital mobile model. So whether they're on their phone, whether they're in their office, in the back room, either way, this is how their digital experience will look as soon as they log in with us. Now, Golden Buns, that's the different one. That's the more mid-tier customer.
They're a little more mature restaurant. They've been around for a while, and they told us they like Sysco brand products, and maybe they see the value in that. Or maybe we see the value in moving them to more Sysco brand products, too. So that's going to be the play here for them. And what you see on the screen here is opportunities to convert from a product they're buying to a Sysco brand product. So you see the patty on the top in the middle there, and you see the patty below it. The one below it is our brand product that we're trying to convince them to go to. So we're going to show them these opportunities to do what we'll call a Swap and Save.
As Kevin said earlier, show them the value of that Swap and Save, not just the per case amount, which may be a couple bucks a case, but annualize that. You could save thousands of dollars per year as a restaurateur if you make this change right now. And we'll give them the specs, and we'll show them the product, and they've got the opportunity to do that. Lower cost to the customer, more reasons to remain a loyal customer to Sysco, and of course, higher margins for us with the Swap and Save opportunity. Now, Burger Town is the third one. That's the college town burger joint. They love deals, and they're shopping for deals. So this is their screen. Each of these is different for each of these customers when they log in and interact with us.
This is their experience and much different than Del Fran's, right, that I was showing you earlier. Hyper-personalized for each customer and reflecting the deals and opportunities we see for them. We're monitoring their behavior. We're monitoring what they are buying. We're monitoring their journey digitally with us, what is attractive to them, what's of value to them, and we're making a very specific offer on very specific products. So on the example you see here, you see a time-bound, spend more, save more, type offer, and that pops up and informs them and incents their behavior. They're already spending, in this example, $6,000 with us. If they spend 900 more, they'll get $190 off. Those numbers are very specific in this example for a reason. Based on the data, we're able to determine where is the right point.
Where is the right point that's going to incent that behavior and maximize value for us? Don't offer too much, offer just right, get the volume, gross profit, dollar positive, for us. Now, since this customer likes a deal, we're going to show them different ways in which they can achieve that deal and give them as many chances as possible to engage with it, and here's two examples for you. The first is the pop-up on the homepage that they obviously can't miss. Here it is, right in front of you. Here's the deal right in the middle of the page. The second is on the top. You see that yellow highlight? I call it an eyebrow.
That's going to follow them across their digital journey with us, so they've got plenty of opportunities to see the growth opportunity, to see the deal, and it's not just a once and done. Gives them the opportunity to convert to Sysco brand or a higher-end, higher-margin product for us. We can make these offers personalized and prompt them where they are, including things that they may not be buying from us. So for this restaurant, maybe it's the appetizers. Not—they're not yet buying from us. We know that. We see their menu. We know what they're buying. Here's an offer on the appetizers. So this can be very unique and specific, and we've also got, as I said earlier, these always-on type deals, and we recently had one of these.
So in the papers and disposables category, we had a deal funded by a supplier that we could promote broadly across a wide customer set. So I'll walk you through some specific examples for specific customers, as I said earlier, and then also at the same time, a wider base deal, in this example, funded by a supplier, to get growth across a big set of customers. So again, you know, like a Mother's Day thing, maybe dessert items for a buffet or a Sysco brand prime rib or what have you, that multiple restaurants may benefit from, in addition to the very specific offer for the very specific customer. Let me tell you how we kind of meet them where they are and give you an example of that.
So the personalized experience that I'm describing to you here is not just limited to the shop digital order entry platform. There's other ways in which you can get it. So for Burger Town, here's an example delivered to their phone. We know this customer likes to text. We've got that data. We know they like it, so we're going to send them a text that looks like this to their phone. And when they click on the text, it's going to become a scrolling email for them. And the email is designed. Am I still on? I guess. My pack just fell, but it's all good. Okay. It's a scrolling email with value across any point in the email. They can click on any point in the email here, and it's going to take them into shop, where they can get this deal, the banner, everything.
So now we've got three places in which we're interacting with them. We've got the shop platform, we've got the text, and we've got the email for them. So that's good, but there's also a fourth way in which we can interact with the customer and get them to engage in the deal and the growth for us. Four ways to get the deal done, greater outreach, greater odds of getting the deal. And that fourth way is through our sales team, our sales consultant. So everything I've said so far is personalization direct to the customer, and that's good. As Greg told you about earlier today, the value of the sales relationship is also very important. So personalization to the sales team is the fourth way in addition to the customer about that customer.
So we give the sales team specific data points about the customer along their journey in our CRM tool, and the burger place is engaging with us, right? They're buying the patties, they're buying the buns, but we know they're not buying the fries in this example. So our salesperson is in the CRM tool, and they're driving by a customer today, and we know that, and we say, "Hey, salesperson, here's a deal for this customer you're going by today that's not buying the fries, for fries that's good for today." And now the salesperson is incented and motivated with an offer to go get more business from someone. Four ways to get the deal closed with the customer.
So let me change gears and talk about the fourth program, and this is, amongst the programs, a little bit of the, the new announcement for the day amongst these growth programs here. I've talked to you so far about some of the programs we've had in place. Some are growing, some are maturing, some we are optimizing. And if you're thinking, "Okay, what's next? What else could Sysco do?" This would be an example of what's next for us, and we call it Sysco Marketplace, and we do new programs like this because we do not and we will not stand still with opportunities to continue to find ways to grow with customers. So what's Marketplace? Marketplace is part of our e-commerce transformation.
It's a digital tool that we're creating, which gives us a very profitable and scalable way to expand the assortment to fulfill customers' needs. It really aims to complement our Broadline and specialty offering to fully serve our customers' product needs. So I want you to think about offerings like organic, sustainable, premium, specialized dietary types, ethnic items, non-food items that are not part of the current SKU set. So you see this green circle here on the page. In the middle are the core offerings that the business has. Best in the business, iconic brand that Victoria is about to talk to you about, the broadest SKU set that we have. From there, you go out a ring to the specialty offerings that we have. More local produce than anyone in the world is part of our specialty offerings, as an example.
As you heard both Kevin and Greg talk about specialty being a huge growth vector and opportunity for us. You've got this awesome core, you've got this tremendous specialty, but there could be more, and that's the most outer ring, and that's what Marketplace represents for us. So it's a one-stop shop where we've built within our own digital e-commerce platform, the capability to bring these offerings from a third party via a drop-ship model, into this existing opportunity. So it's a commission-based model where we get a share of each transaction handled by the third party, who's going to drop ship using a typical carrier like a UPS or a FedEx. So we're now live, with the program that we have, and we're able to bring the digital marketing, part of this program to market in less than 9 months.
I'm not talking 500 SKUs, I'm not talking 1,000 SKUs. We've brought 15,000 SKUs in nine months to the market via this program. In short, we've already got the broadest assortment, but if we didn't carry it in the past, we will carry it now. We're focusing on the breadth of the existing categories, like niche categories. I want you to think like the grocery category, canned, dry categories, and we're expanding into adjacent categories, even into areas like furniture. Maybe you're buying from Sysco already, but you need a heater for your outdoor patio. You can now get that through Sysco. Maybe you're a very specialized restaurant and you thought you needed to go to a specialty niche distributor to get a saffron spice for your menu. You don't need to go to the niche distributor. We've got it in Marketplace for you.
One-stop shop for us. We can leverage that Drop Ship model, really provides low operating costs for us because we don't need to invest in the fleet or the facilities to have this expanded SKU set, and as I said, on a commission-based type model, high profit opportunity for us. So to maximize the adoption, in addition to the digital access, we can also leverage this tremendous network of sales colleagues that we have to advance the opportunity of this increased offering. So essentially, what we've built here is another reason to not go to a niche distributor and to keep your business with us and grow your business with us and grow that share of wallet with us. Our projection and how we're looking at the program right now is an incremental $25 million in EBIT to the company.
That's all part of what Kenny's going to walk you through. So let me hit one more topic here, before I close, and it's a really important one. We know that growing the business responsibly is important to all of us, and it's also important to our customers. We are scope three for our customers. A lot of our customers have set goals that are part of their growth strategy, part of their responsibility strategy. They need a distributor who is also committed to a lot of the same things. We can be that partner for them. And when we do this, and when we do this right, it can drive a lot of business value for us.
That responsible growth strategy is in those three pillars that I've talked to you before about, and you look at people as the first pillar, and that's really about global good and how we stay committed to fighting hunger in the communities in which we serve. It's also about products in pillar number two, which is creating a product category that matters to them. We've got some tremendous attributes within our product that will help our customers grow, and it's about planet, which is about fostering a more sustainable supply chain that some of our customers really need and will rely on. Just some examples for you.
Last November, we launched a new assortment of product called One Planet. One Table, which is a grouping of products that are certified, have specific badges within our program that says, "This product is certified with this, this product is certified with that," and our customers are able to understand the origins of the product, the responsible nature in which that product was grown or harvested, and that product assortment is selling at a higher rate than the rest of the product assortment. It's valuable and important to our customers. We continue to partner with all of our customers on this, and they need somebody to work with. In this part of the game, you either have it or you don't, and we do, and so they will come to us.
That works really well for a lot of sophisticated national chain type accounts who will put that in their contract with us and make it a requirement. But it also matters for some of our independent local customers. An example I'll give you is, we're able to announce, within the last couple of weeks, the rollout of some new electric trucks at our Houston site. 11 new electric tractors, as part of our program that we're doing there. We had a big event at the site, and it was great, and we had some customers there. There was a customer there who owns a big hotel conference center in Houston, an independent hotel conference center, and she wanted to come see the truck, and she was able to ride in the truck and drive around.
Some of you have seen the vehicle when you were at the CAGNY Conference with us a couple of years ago, and one of the things you may remember is how incredibly quiet that vehicle is compared to your traditional 18-wheeler. This really matters to this hotel because guess what? They're a great customer of ours, so we have a relationship with them that we call a key drop, meaning we're delivering early to them, like 3:00 A.M. type delivery. That's good for them because they're a big customer, and it's convenient for them, but their delivery dock is like below rows of rooms, and that truck sitting there idling was a deterrent for her and a problem for her.
And now she says, "I want all my business with you on this truck because I'm not going to get any more complaints from the hotel rooms above my delivery dock." She loves the truck, loves the opportunity to do it. An example of doing the right thing for the environment that can also drive business for us. So we're going to continue to embed these type of opportunities for us, and this includes important topics like DEI for us. We had a goal for 2025 to have 62% of our U.S. workforce population to be from diverse groups. We've already achieved that goal. So we're making very good progress and just good examples of how we can continue to grow the business in a very responsible way.
So I'm going to be turning it over to Victoria here in just a minute, but to wrap up, as you can see, we've got some really fantastic long-term profitable growth opportunities that leverage that awesome core that Greg talked to you about. And we've got the innovation you'd expect from the industry leader to continue to advance on top of that. Game-changing programs that take our opportunity out and above and beyond from a traditional B2B industry, and think a little more B2C-like, and leverage that data, leverage those opportunities, and increase that moat. Strong quality programs like Sysco Your Way, Perks, incremental new programs like Sysco Marketplace, and lastly, and importantly, doing things the right way for a value-driven approach to drive long-term, profitable, and responsible growth.
Now, I'd be happy to turn it over to my friend and colleague, Victoria Gutierrez, who's gonna talk to us about how we're gonna merchandise all of this. Victoria, over to you.
Good morning. I'm coming up on my third-year anniversary with Sysco, so I'm new to most of you all in the room and most of the folks online. So I'm gonna, if you can indulge me for a minute, I'm gonna do a quick intro. So prior to Sysco, I was a partner at Boston Consulting Group, working in their retail transformation practice. I had the opportunity to work with mostly grocery retailers across four continents, and my favorite projects were always when I could work with a very tenured merchandising team that was running their business by gut and help them equip their teams with the right analytics and strategies to be able to drive significant cost out, to optimize their promotional spend, and to invest in the right places for growth.
You can also imagine that during COVID, I also had the opportunity to upskill those teams on how to deal with merchandising digitally. So why did I come to Sysco? First, my idea of fun is going to new restaurants. My license plate literally says, "Foodie." True story. But, more seriously, the reason why I'm so excited about being at Sysco is that the path we're on here, from a merchandising perspective, is that we can build those same capabilities that I mentioned from my time at BCG, and we have a plan to do it faster than the rest of the industry can do it. So today I'm going to take you through four aspects of the new work we are building in merchandising, with the goal of continuing to drive our industry-leading gross margins and to accelerate our growth through product strategies.
First, we're going to go through Sysco Brand. As you've heard since this morning, this is a powerhouse portfolio for us, and we're standing up new capabilities to be able to further penetrate customer wallets with this portfolio, both in the U.S. as well as globally, for all customer sizes and types. Second, I'll talk through how we are continuing to build new levers in our strategic sourcing programs as we increasingly take advantage of Sysco's size and scale globally, and how we're expanding our best strategies to a global view. Third, the good work we do in Sysco Brand, our broader product portfolio, and strategic sourcing all comes to life through our sales channels. You've heard a lot today about how we continue to invest in our digital channels. I'll walk you through some of the work we're doing to be able to proactively influence customer behaviors online.
Then lastly, you've heard about the huge opportunity Sysco specialty businesses represent. We are planning to expand our product offerings and sales strategies specifically for Italian and Asian customers, and we're going to do so in a way that leverages our existing network footprint. So to start, why should you care about Sysco Brand? Why is it important? This is a $22 billion a year portfolio. The Sysco Classic brand alone is a $5 billion brand, and we have five additional billion-dollar brands on our own. This portfolio would place us among the leading consumer packaged goods companies in America, and they're growing. So if you look at the Sysco Classic, Sysco Imperial, Sysco Reliance, those are boxes that if you were to peek in a kitchen later today, you would see those types of boxes. We call those back of house or in the kitchen.
So then you would wonder, why are all these other brands on the page? We bring brands to our customers that actually show up to their consumers as well. A good example in the middle is Wholesome Farms. This is a leading dairy brand in food service, so think eggs, milk, creamers, those types of things. So if you keep your eyes out, you've probably seen this in coffee shops, in hotel rooms, or even on an airplane, in the little creamers for your coffees or packs of butter. So it's a great example of how our brand equity actually extends into consumer-facing applications as well. On the right-hand side, Greg touched on this, but Sysco Brand represents 47% of our local cases in broad line right now, which is our most mature market for Sysco Brands.
Why this matters is Sysco Brand cases are typically more profitable for Sysco. They provide opportunities for our customers to save on items that perform as well or better than their national brand equivalents. We bring unique innovations to them, and customers who buy these items are much stickier to Sysco. Starting from that very strong $22 billion base, we're investing in new capabilities that we predict will deliver $1 billion of incremental Sysco Brand sales each of the next three years. First, we're focusing on the items that really matter. We have a team who wakes up every day to make sure our very best items show up in the right way for our customers, and that means doing things like doing a digital audit to ensure that they show up really great online with the right features, benefits, photos, attributes, you name it.
Second, making sure these items are actually stocked everywhere. There are stocking gaps out there for some of these items. And then, perhaps most importantly, we're making sure that our sales consultants are trained and empowered on these important items. We want to make sure they have the right stories and the right collateral for their customers.... so that they can help coach a customer on why, for example, they should switch to a Sysco brand Portico seafood item, so they're going to see a higher yield because we have tighter specifications for that product than the rest of the industry does. Second, we're rethinking about how we work with our biggest national customers to identify the right opportunities for them to also save money and partner more holistically with Sysco through our brands.
Those first two points are around building upon our place of strength in U.S., but the third area of focus is on accelerating the presence of Sysco brands globally. What's great is these brands do resonate with our international customers, and they provide unique opportunities to both hit lower price points for more price-sensitive segments, as well as bring innovation globally. Greg mentioned earlier that in Europe, the merchandising teams have launched over 1,500 Sysco brand items, and we have over 2,000 more planned in the next three years. They're leveraging those existing brands and our existing quality standards to expand opportunities for their customers to save with Sysco. Now, historically, our sales consultants have been great at identifying and suggesting what we call conversion opportunities for our customers, helping them switch to Sysco brand to save.
What we're doing now is matching that great in-person expertise with the right online experience, so that we're suggesting savings opportunities to the customer when it really matters, which is when they're placing their order. Through a mechanism we call Swap and Save, we are suggesting personalized opportunities for switching to Sysco. Neil shared this earlier, and what's great about this is it provides a great mechanism for the merchandising teams to unlock real value in our merchandising strategies. So we make sure that when we show a Swap and Save opportunity for a customer, it's a priority one, backed up by great profitability and the right pricing. Since we launched the program, over 45,000 customers have saved money with this feature, and those who acted on these opportunities saved an average of 10%.
This is an area we're going to continue to push on to highlight to customers the great opportunities to save. Sales consultants also see these same recommendations when they log in to shop or their digital tools, so that they can reinforce the exact same message for customers. Now, while we are the industry leaders with our own brands, we don't take that market leadership for granted. We want to make sure that these brands continue to have the very strongest brand equity in the industry and be best at meeting customer needs, and that's why we're undertaking a big project to actually evolve them. The first big change that is starting to hit the market is we are transitioning our exterior packaging from white cardboard to brown corrugated. A lot of our customers and their customers view kraft as more fresh, more natural, more sustainable.
This change allows us to reinforce our position on sustainability without compromising what are extremely high standards regarding product safety and packaging integrity. Current estimates suggest that we will impact over 270 million boxes annually, and moving from white to craft requires 17% less materials to actually get that white color and 30% less energy. So less energy and less material means cost savings both for our suppliers and for Sysco. The next big change that will come is a simplification of the portfolio on our core brands. We talk about as our core brands are the ones that say Sysco first, so Reliance, Classic, Imperial, and Supreme. First, we're going from four to three.
In talking with chefs, customers, stakeholders, we found that, actually, they didn't really understand the great quality of these products, so we are combining the two into premium. It resonates better with customers and conveys the real specialness of these products. These aren't products focused on saving money. These are products that are really special, chef-driven, and can actually, you know, make a key menu item stand out. As we do this work, we're also going to be refining the visual identity of these brands, so it's very clear when you look at the box, we have a good, better, best quality strategy. Moving on to strategic sourcing. This is not a new topic for Sysco by any means, but we're continuing to find new ways to evolve the approach.
The main lever here is cost savings with suppliers, and we target 3% annually on in-scope items. We derive that value, and then it's a conversation with Kenny on how we strategically either pass that through to the customer, flow it through to the bottom line, or reinvest for growth in other ways. But of course, we're going to expand the playbook here. One way that the approach has changed recently has been to really improve our supply chain resiliency. If you think about all the supply chain disruptions over the last few years, we learned that we really need to have multiple sources of supply for our most important items.
So many of our recent category negotiations have been successful in bringing new suppliers to the Sysco family so that if something goes wrong and something important, there's still a case we can put on the truck to the customer, and it's really helped our fill rates improve substantially. Second, as we continue this work to optimize our cost positions, we can't lose sight of the nimbleness at the local level that Kevin talked about earlier this morning. While we pursue new ways to take advantage of sourcing across country and business borders, we're putting into place new processes to ensure that our local teams are empowered to take advantage of the right localized opportunities to save. And then a third lever that I'm going to share with you is that we're building on focusing ways to have win-win scenarios with our suppliers focused around growth.
We absolutely expect and pursue best in industry cost, given our size and scale, but we're now leveraging those suppliers' capabilities in marketing and their sales forces in new ways, taking advantage of our new capabilities and interacting with our customers both digitally and in person. As we talk about cost savings, we have a new tool in the toolkit that I'd love to talk about today. We call that our cost management algorithms. We now know the raw material makeup for the most important products we purchase and can leverage that proprietary model to see where costs to the supplier on those products have changed substantially. So I'll walk you through an example. Imagine a big box of chicken breasts. Costs for getting that product are feed for the chickens, so we need to know about the corn, wheat, and soy commodity markets.
There's labor in the plants and the cost of packaging. There's corrugated and resins for plastic. We not only know that all of these components matter for that box of chicken, we know the percentage of each of those components and how they roll up to the total cost. If you multiply that across 10,000 items in our assortment and 500 commodity indices, that's the model that our merchandising team runs on a monthly basis to identify where costs to our suppliers have changed substantially. So I'm going to tell you a story about someone on my team named JoDon Eilers. JoDon is our Vice President of Center of Plate. That's our proteins business. He's been with Sysco for 25 years, mostly in proteins, and has been in the business for... and the industry for over 30.
JoDon knows more suppliers, knows more about these products, and has probably purchased more poultry, pork, and beef than just about anybody in the States. Nobody's more informed on how to predict and adapt to markets. But if I go back to my chicken example, JoDon can have all that experience, there is no way JoDon can know down to the penny how much the movement of corn and soy markets is going to impact the per-pound cost of chicken. So this tool is taking our incredibly tenured merchandising team, folks like JoDon, and making them bionic, combining objective analytics with really, really deep human expertise. And we're running the play in our way.
Our new approach to strategic sourcing has delivered substantial gross profit in the U.S. over the last 3 years, and as you heard from Greg earlier, we're improving upon the program in our other countries and businesses. The strong profitability improvements we've seen internationally can be partially attributed to this work. As you see on the page, we're delivering anywhere from 3-5+ savings on products that have gone through the process in our other countries. Additionally, we are leveraging this common capability and better connectivity across borders to go after global sourcing opportunities. Kevin mentioned my shrimp example, so here it is. A lot of the shrimp consumed in the world is from countries that Sysco doesn't operate in. We're all eating a lot of imported shrimp. By consolidating our global volumes across all of Sysco and sharing supplier relationships, we achieved great savings across the globe.
1% in the U.S., we were already really at scale with this product, but 9% savings in Europe, 8% savings in Canada, all from one competitive bid process run by one team working together. As we look across the next three years, we're going to be working to go after more opportunities like shrimp, and we're going to do that in a more consistent and repeatable manner. Now, moving on to digital, I mentioned that part of our strategic sourcing approach is to bring the supplier into the growth conversation. We're using our new digital capabilities to commercialize those partnerships in new ways.
As Neil mentioned earlier, personalization is allowing Sysco to tailor offers and experiences to our customers in a wide variety of channels, and one way we'll be expanding the return on that work, on that investment, is by introducing more breadth and depth of products offered online on Shop. You heard earlier about our specialty work, as well as our third-party marketplace, offering a long tail of niche items to our customers. But the other way we can leverage these new digital capabilities for growth is by having key suppliers co-invest with us on the promotional pricing and offers that really matter for our customers. This past November, we had a chance to run one of these campaigns with a very key supplier.
They supplied funding to support discounts specifically for customers who had never purchased their products, and they worked with us to activate on a digital merchandising strategy that was coordinated with personalized emails and activation, not only with our sales team in the field, but their sales team as well. The campaign resulted in a doubling of the customers who are buying this supplier's products, and the supplier saw a 1.5x return on their investment. These are really compelling numbers for a supplier. So this is the type of thing we're going to be doing at scale going forward, partnering with our most important suppliers to drive growth. What's great here is this drives savings to Sysco's customers without impacting product profitability. My confidence in this program is quite high, and I'm super excited about this capability.
We've brought in new merchandising executives from Kroger and Amazon onto my team, who have deep experience in running programs like this and are helping teach the new capability to the whole group. Greg mentioned earlier that we have a really substantial moat in terms of our digital experience for customers, particularly on Shop. We want to continue giving our sales consultants this leg up. First, we needed to make sure we were meeting our customers where they are and how they're running their business, which meant launching Shop in Español to improve usability for a large portion of users. Next, we looked to customer behavior. Kevin talked this morning about how historically it was really, really easy to reorder last week's groceries on Shop.
Customers loved that. What we're doing now is making the changes necessary to encourage customers to truly shop around, looking at different product categories from what they usually buy, as well as taking a look at deals and opportunities to change up their menu. That work has resulted in some really encouraging early numbers. I've got them on the right-hand side of the page. 6% increase in weekly visits to shop, 2% increase in total customer orders year-over-year, 6% increase in visits to product detail pages from search results. That means they're looking at different stuff, and 14% increase in products added to list. That list one is really important because most of our customers use lists to form the basis of their order in the days before they actually click Submit.
With 80% of our orders interacting via shop, these types of improvements to customer experience are going to be an area of continued focus. Now, lunch is coming up, so let's talk a bit about pizza. We've spoken a lot about our excitement regarding the Greco acquisition and what is an over $11 billion opportunity in Italian cuisine overall. The Greco footprint provides us a great base to build on. They're the red states here, but the work we're doing now is bringing the right Italian sort—assortment, so quintessential Italian products, into our Sysco broad line sites to expand our reach for Italian customers overall.
This means bringing in key national brand partners of the Greco merchandising team, along with Greco's own brands, key Sysco brands, and niche offerings to these existing Sysco warehouses, where we have a large presence of current or potential future Italian and pizza customers. We've also launched what's called a campus model. That's using a Sysco warehouse and the efficiencies of our Sysco operations to procure and pick product that's going to go on Greco trucks. The plan here is to use this as a blueprint for how we can maintain the nimbleness and expertise of the great Greco specialty model, while capitalizing on the existing footprint and efficiency of our broad line business. Greg talked earlier about Specialty's potential to double in size as well as our ambitions for growth in the U.S. The way to think about the Italian platform is it's in both of those figures.
It's a major driver of the specialty growth, but it's also one of the fastest-growing cuisines in our broadline business. One more, the Asian cuisines. We talked a little bit earlier. There is a small Sysco specialty company called Asian Foods. They're located in Minnesota but serve five states today. That's the map on the left bottom of the screen. They enjoy a high market share and high rate of growth through a really unique sales model. The sales consultants at Asian Foods speak the languages of their diverse Asian customers. They deeply understand these cuisines, and they deeply understand the cultural customs. What we're going to do over the next three years is expand this model into key markets, leveraging our existing Sysco broadline warehouses, but adding an assortment informed by the Asian Foods team and a sales model that replicates theirs.
This is a business we expect to ramp to a $500 million run rate by FY 2027. The Asian opportunity overall is as big as Italian. It's a $10 billion opportunity, so the potential to grow here is real. Now, Kevin and Greg both talked about the investments we're making to expand our capacity. What's great about this Asian cuisine opportunity is that half of the revenue opportunity we see is in states where we've begun warehouse expansion already. The opportunity here is to bring in the right assortment and the right sales model without disrupting our broadline assortment or service. On the bottom right-hand side, that second map, that's our plans for where we'll have a footprint of Asian Foods in FY 2027. A couple more things to love about Asian Foods.
First, the assortment is not just about these specialty ethnic products, which are critical. If you look at all of the things that these Asian customers buy, a lot of the items are actually really important broadline items like commodity oil or produce. So this combines the best of our cuisine expertise with our most competitive Sysco brand items. And then, because the ability for Sysco to deliver both the specialty and broadline assortment on a truck with that broad assortment, this model enables really large drop sizes at our customers. That's really profitable from an operational perspective. So that helps us service a very wide delivery radius as we bring this assortment in and replicate the sales model. Now let me bring it all together.
In summary, we are pushing really hard to transform Sysco's merchandising capabilities to continue to support our industry-leading margins and to fund growth. I talked about four key levers today. Key lever one was continuing to grow our $22 billion powerhouse of Sysco brands, which improve our profitability, improve customer retention, save our customers money, and bring them interesting things on their menus. Second, I talked about making sure we are always innovating on ways to expand our strategic sourcing toolkit and replicating great programs globally to make sure we are always staying right on cost. Third, leveraging our digital capabilities to really bring category strategies and supplier partnerships to life, ensuring we're meeting our customers where they need us with the right products and the right offers, both online and offline.
And fourth, expanding our footprint and focus on high-growth cuisines, amplifying the uniqueness of our specialty models while leveraging our broad line efficiencies. All of this work gives me great confidence in our ability to deliver local case growth profitably. So you've heard from Kevin, you heard about sales and ops from Greg, growth from Neil, and merchandising from me. I now get to welcome Kenny up to the stage to bring it together in our financial outlook. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Victoria, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here with all of you today at NYC. Now, I've been at Sysco for over a year now, and I can tell you this, I am more excited today than when I first started. So why is that? Why is that? Two reasons why. First, whether I am in Houston or visiting our field team, I am continuously amazed and impressed by the passion our team has to provide world-class service to our customers. Our colleagues truly embody the Sysco purpose, which is connecting the world to share food and care for one another. This superior service is not only reflected in our industry-leading NPS score, but it's also reflected in our industry-leading margins and profit. The second reason why I'm excited is we have the fundamental building blocks to win in this space.
First, investment-grade balance sheet, the only one in our industry. Number two, ample cash and liquidity driven by strong conversion rates. Third, this is important one. Number one, market-leading position with number one market-leading margins. Size and scale really matter in this industry. Fourth, our talented people, 74,000 strong globally. And then last but not least, Sysco, our iconic and well-established brand. Now, before I go into the financial details, I do wanna share with all of you a recent perception study we did from investors. So thank you all for your valuable insights. We agree with the study findings, and our Investor Day presentation was actually constructed considering your feedback. Now, there's a handful of things on the page that bubbled up as key themes, and I'll go through them fairly quickly. First, ensuring earnings and financial performance are consistent and sustainable.
Second, achieve, set achievable targets and expectations. This is what I call say-do ratio. Do what you say you will do. Third, grow our local business. Fourth, more color around strategy and growth initiatives. And then lastly, continue to grow our business profitably while achieving operating leverage via productivity. This feedback, along with our own internal process, helped directly construct the building blocks of our long-term algo, which I'll talk about in a little bit. The good news here is we hear you, we agree, and we're aligned. Moving on to the next slide. Let's take a step back and speak to Sysco's achievement and attractive return profile. Between 2019 and 2024, net sales and operating cash flow will grow at 6% and 5% from a CAGR standpoint, respectively. This is strong, stable performance over a five-year period, despite industry headwinds.
We are the market leader in a growing industry, and our leadership position are showcased in our financials. Our gross margins and EBITDA margins are 1.3 x and 1.5 x higher than the average core peers, respectively. We plan on generating approximately $3 billion of operating cash flow this year. And last, our lens through ROIC, coupled with our investment-grade balance sheet, is a key differentiator in this space as it allows us to deliver today, invest for tomorrow, reward our shareholders, and can weather any storms that passes through. Moving on to how we frame the growth algorithm. You heard our team speak about the importance of four things: focus on the core, driving Recipe for Growth initiatives, unlocking merchandising capabilities, and executing on supply chain efficiencies.
These four items corresponds directly to our growth algorithm as it is based on sustainable growth, operational excellence, against the backdrop of a balanced capital return, which yields a compelling TSR for shareholders. As Greg and Kevin mentioned, we will leverage our competitive advantage to drive growth in core business through local, specialty, and international, and we'll continue to focus on accretive bolt-on M&A to drive sustainable growth. Furthermore, as Neil highlighted, we have both short-term and long-term programs that will also contribute to sustainable growth. Turning now to operational excellence. Our strong margin management performance will be driven by making sure our supply chain becomes even more efficient and continue to focus on cost out programs globally, which would yield operating leverage in our P&L.
As Victoria discussed, we will optimize GP dollars, gross profit dollars, through our merchandising capabilities and leverage our size and scale to continue to bring down cost of goods sold through strategic sourcing. Last, we have a balanced approach to capital return, where we invest in the business, maintaining our investment-grade balance sheet, rewarding our shareholders through growing dividends and share repurchase, which is all factored in into our growth algo. These factors, all combined, will drive compelling returns for our shareholders. Now, on to the next slide. Sysco's algorithm for growth. The following is a three-year algo that spans between FY 2025 and FY 2027. We have deep, deep confidence in our ability to deliver consistently against these targets, which includes the following: sales growth, 4%-6% per year through both organic and inorganic growth.
Adjusted operating income growth of 6%-8% per year, which includes positive leverage across the P&L. OI growth is in line with current market consensus. Now, there are below-the-line, non-operational factors in FY 2025. This is due to global minimum tax impacting our FY 2025 tax rate by approximately 50-100 basis points versus FY 2024, and higher interest expense as we continue to invest in high accretive ROIC projects while maintaining our net leverage ratio of 2.5x-2.75x. Due to these items, adjusted EPS growth will be 6%-8% per year, in line with our adjusted operating income. Last, we value our Dividend Aristocrat status with a dividend yield of approximately 3%. This will render a total TSR profile between 9%-11% per year.
Before I dive into the line item details of the algo, we believe this algo is achievable and one in which we can deliver on a consistent basis going forward. Double-clicking into the sales growth outlook, three assumptions are made here. We assume a stable macro environment, one. Second, return to historical rates of commodity costs, and third, continue share gains. As the market leader in most of the markets we operate, we have a large base. 90% of the incremental sales within the algo will come from the core drivers listed on the page, and 10% from growth initiatives. We plan on achieving 4%-6% growth on the top line through the following assumptions: 2% inflation, 1.5%-3.5% volume growth, and 50 basis points of M&A growth.
The inflation assumption is in line with historical averages in our industry. And oh, by the way, we're seeing 2% right now at the spot moment. Let's talk more about the volume expectation here. Our core volume will come from accelerating our core growth vectors. The three most impactful vectors are the following: First, local and chain business, contributing low to mid-single-digit sales growth through the four initiatives that Greg mentioned earlier. Now, if we double-click into local, if you combine the M&A and our growth initiatives, total local sales will be closer to mid-single-digit sales growth. Second, specialty. Specialty contributing to high single-digit sales growth, especially around our push into Italian and Asian food expansion. That's a high-growth area for us. Third, international contributing mid-to-high single-digit growth by leveraging our global operating model.
These growth ranges are informed by three things: historical performance, current market inputs, and our view and insights on forward initiatives. Lastly, initiatives, as Neil talked about, Sysco Your Way, perks, personalization, they will produce double-digit growth year-on-year basis. They are providing dividends for us today and will do so in the future. Over the next three slides, we will further break down the core drivers. First, let's talk about customer mix benefits. We value both our national and local customers because we are able to leverage benefits from each sets of customers. Let's first talk about national customers, including Sigma. We are able to obtain route density, which allows us to serve our customers at a lower cost per delivery. So for example, let's take a national chain customer like Jersey Mike's, who may order multiple times in a week.
These frequent and large order quantities are combined with other customer stops, enabling our trucks to leave the warehouse full and maximizing pieces per trip, ultimately driving productivity for us. Next, national customers have multiyear contracts in place, so from a free cash flow standpoint, it is recurring and it is consistent. Last, national customers provide portfolio diversification, where 2/3 are restaurants and 1/3 is more resilient segments such as healthcare, government, and education.... Now moving on to the right side of the page now, our local customers. Our local customers are significantly more profitable with higher margins. The second piece is we have a higher Sysco brand penetration, where we offer value through price points and higher quality ingredients. Furthermore, we're really able to leverage sales through team-based selling, Total Team Selling here.
As highlighted earlier by Greg, an average ticket sale per customer increases three times when you combine broadline with a product from one specialty company, and six times when you combine broadline with two specialty companies. It's amazing. It really exemplifies and magnifies. And then last, due to the non-contractual nature of the local business, we're able to pass through cost inflation more efficiently, especially at a spot moment, and we can be right on price immediately. Now, if you look at the bottom, scaling fixed costs. The benefit from scaling our fixed costs comes from our sourcing and purchasing decisions and scaling our delivery supply chain costs. These scale benefits are exactly the reason why we have to grow both local and national customers. Next, moving on to specialty.
Specialty provides a significant competitive advantage, and the collection of our specialty platform generates significant revenue for Sysco at a higher margin attachment rate and offers significant opportunity for cross-selling. This year, FY 2024, we expect specialty sales to be over $9 billion, with a five-year CAGR of 11%. We continue to expect compelling growth rates of specialty with high-single-digits CAGR during the ALGO period. As we grow specialty, we will accelerate team-based selling, which ultimately drives local growth. As you can see, all of our growth vectors are interoperable and connected. Let's move on to international. International is a growth engine for our business. It is a growth vector for our business. We are targeting mid- to high-single-digits growth over the next three years.
Our Global Operating Model, led by Greg, is working and it's yielding dividends, and we're seeing accretive margin expansion and robust top line based on lifting and shifting our U.S. capabilities to our international markets. On the page, you can see most noteworthy, sales has grown 25% and adjusted operating income has grown 33%. There is no reason why we cannot continue to expand margins in international. We have plenty of room to go, and one proof point of what international can be in the future is our success story in Ireland. In Ireland, we are the market leader, and sales has grown approximately 40% between FY 2019 and FY 2023. And operating margins are two times of our international segment, even outpacing our U.S. business. So how did they achieve it?
We've been able to successfully apply the US RFG playbook to Ireland, so therefore we can increase penetration through local. We've deployed Sysco Your Way, and we're actually cross-selling right now, at this, this very moment, with our recent acquisition, Ready Chef, which is going really well. To enable sustainable growth, our investments will drive both present and future growth. We plan on delivering today, building for tomorrow, through our well-ladder investment profile. Our capital allocation is consistent and disciplined as we plan to invest in our technology, fleet, and buildings, and expect capital expenditures to be approximately 1% of sales. Each of our investment has an attractive payback period. For example, let's take fleet. As we continue to modernize our fleet to become more efficient, this will help reduce operating expense over time while being beneficial to the environment.
Our prudent expansion in high-potential growth markets and segments with the 10 new facilities will increase capacity and help drive top line and GP dollars. Again, these investments are well thought out, they're disciplined, they're targeting high-growth areas, and they will drive higher ROIC for our company. Moving on to M&A. Our systematic and disciplined approach to M&A focuses on enhancing our product portfolio, capabilities, and footprint. We are primarily focused on tuck-in acquisitions across our specialty space that will deliver strong return on investment and where we can drive top-line and bottom-line synergies. Again, the target contribution from M&A in our ALGO is 50 bps per year. Let me double-click now into a couple, couple companies we bought recently. So the next slide provides example of how we derive value from our acquisitions. Two acquisitions, left-hand side, Greco, and the most recent, Don acquisition.
The common denominator or common traits across these two companies are the following: number one, massive, massive cross-selling opportunities with the Sysco business. Number two, successfully growing in new geographies. And the last but not least, as Greg mentioned, the 1 + 1 = 3 equation with synergies.... Let's first start with Greco. Greco has grown approximately 65% since the acquisition. That's a lot of chicken parm. That's my favorite food. It gets me really excited as an Italian food fan and as a CFO. As the leading Italian distributor, we've been able to leverage the Italian assortment and increase our share of wallet and number of customers via these enhanced product offering. Let's move over to the right-hand side. Don is a leading distributor of food service, equipment, and supplies, and it's a relatively higher margin business, and it gives our customer a one-stop shop.
What does that mean? Sysco today currently sells to hundreds of thousands of customers who are not currently buying restaurant equipment or supplies from Don. We have a great opportunity to introduce Don assortment to our customers and help create top line and bottom line growth. Moving on to operational excellence and how we plan to create positive leverage in our business. We have the following drivers to help optimize GP dollars. There's four of them. Number one, customer mix. We continue to invest in local specialty national chains, which include growth from higher margin renewals and resilient segments. Second, Sysco Brand. You heard Victoria talk about $22 billion in sales. For me, Sysco brand is a win-win proposition. For example, we can leverage pre-cut Sysco brand items to help save labor for our customers.
It's a win-win for our customer, it's a win for us as well, give us a higher gross margin product. Third, pricing optimization. Our centralized pricing tool allows us to be right on price and react to a changing market dynamic efficiently, helping us manage pricing real time. And last but not least, strategic sourcing, which has driven margin improvement both in the U.S. and internationally as well. Strategic sourcing is helping us drive down costs by partnering with our suppliers and sharing some of those benefits with our customers. Let's talk about corporate expense/SG&A. We will continue to be disciplined in this space over the next three years and beyond, with the cost out being partially offset by wage inflation. We will continue to drive positive leverage.
In fact, by 2027, we forecast corporate costs will be 1% of sales, with improvements sequentially each year. We've already kicked off really good work around incremental cost out savings, and we have a robust pipeline entering FY 2025. These are non-client-facing, non-field-related costs, which provides additional opportunity for us to leverage technology, AI, automation, through to reduce redundancy and administrative task. Furthermore, we continue to look at third-party contractors for additional savings. It is a muscle we have flexed. It's a muscle we know how to flex. Really good progress here. More to come. As shown on the next slide, we continue to drive supply chain efficiency, which is incremental on top of the GSC cost out I just talked about.
Our global supply chain levers are derived, as Greg coined it, being brilliant at the basic and layering technology to unlock value for our enterprise. We will leverage our scale, 334 DCs globally, more than twice of our average core peer. We continue to see improvements across segments and productivity, and the biggest driver is retention. For example, just simply moving retention of a selector from 0-3 months to 3-6 months exponentially improves productivity. Days and months matter here. Over the past year, the impact of a fully staffed team, coupled with strong retention, has yielded margin, both dollar and rate expansion. Remember, retention is the gift that keeps on giving. There is a basket of benefit when it comes to improved retention, productivity, safety, shrink, transportation, lowering hiring costs, and the likes.
All of these work together to produce positive leverage and higher profit for Sysco. Remember, every penny saved per piece flows directly to the bottom line and scales globally across all the pieces. We are a scale business. Free cash flow. Our solid free cash flow and strong conversion rates will be an outcome of the operational excellence discussed in the previous slides. We are targeting 50% conversion rates from EBITDA, showing our commitment on deploying future cash flow, on investing in the business and rewarding our shareholders. We expect free cash flow and conversion rates to be more consistent going forward against a more normal operating environment. This shows the strength and the quality of earnings of our business. Similar to this year, we expect free cash flow to increase every year in the algo period. This is my favorite slide.
I know it's probably a little small on the screen, so I'll try to walk you through it. It's my favorite slide by far. This slide compares our total return profile and dividend against the consumer staples sector. We are proud to be part of the sector for three reasons: It's known for consistent growth, solid dividends, and low volatility. In fact, compared to the consumer staples sector, we stack favorably on a go-forward revenue and EPS basis. We also have market-leading ROIC. Our ROIC, as you can see on the page, is roughly 500 basis points higher than the consumer staples sector and more than twice of our average core peer in the foodservice space. As we discussed in the opening, we are confident in the attractive returns of our business and our market-leading position.
We're also confident in providing consistent returns to shareholders, which is an important factor as a large cap in this sector. Our ROIC will continue to increase, given we are laser-focused on profitable growth and as our supply chain becomes more efficient. Last, we will enhance the value of our M&A acquisitions by driving top-line and operating expense synergies that will drive additional value for our shareholders. So as you can see on the right-hand side of the chart, given where we are today and given the confidence that we have in the algo, this is a really attractive investment proposition for our shareholders and investors. I would like to now transition to our balanced approach to capital allocation. First, we will invest for growth.
We are planning again to be approximately 1% of sales annually from a CapEx standpoint over the next three years. This consists of both growth and maintenance CapEx. Second, we plan on maintaining our investment-grade balance sheet while operating within 2.5x-2.75x net leverage ratio. Last, we will return cash back to shareholders through dividend and share repurchases, which I will dive deeper in the next couple of pages. First, let's talk about share repurchase. We have repurchased, on the left-hand side, you can see, over $4 billion in shares over the last five years, and we expect an incremental $3 billion in shares in the next three years, a step-up in run rate. That's $1 billion per year, and that will fluctuate based on capital requirements and M&A levels.
We still have over $3 billion of authorization left in our current share repurchase program. We are constantly and consistently in the market, repurchasing our shares. Let's dive into dividends. We are committed on growing our dividend. We plan on operating with a healthy dividend payout ratio of 40%-50% of adjusted EPS. We have a strong track record of dividend increases, with over $1 billion planned for each year of the algorithm. In fact, we are only one of four consumer staples company that has consistently increased dividend for the past 25+ years and increased the dividend amount by more than 35%+ in the past five years. Additionally, we plan to grow our dividend every year, consistent with maintaining our Dividend Aristocrat status. Over time, you can expect our dividend growth to be in line with our adjusted EPS growth.
So to summarize, we like our position. I'll say it again, we like our position. We are the industry leader that sits in an industry that's growing. We have a balanced and diversified portfolio across geographies, channels, product mixes. We have multiple vectors of growth in core volume and through M&A across local, chain, specialty, and international. And we have a solid pipeline of accretive growth initiatives that yields a strong ROIC and a TSR between 9%-11%. We have a strong track record of dividend growth and share repurchase, all while maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet. This allows us to deliver value on the spot and play the long game on the forward. Therefore, whether you are a value investor, a growth investor, an income investor, Sysco presents a compelling opportunity. I'll end with where I started.
We are confident with the growth algo, as these targets that I presented today are achievable, and we are confident we can consistently deliver on a go-forward basis. We have the right leadership team in place to execute against these targets. We are confident we can deliver the three years, but we're very confident that we can continuously improve our financial performance over time. This is a great time to be at Sysco. I'm loving it here. There's no other place I'd rather be. Our future is bright, and we are positioned to win. Thank you for your support, and with that, I'll turn it over to Kevin Hourican. Thanks, all.
All right. Thank you so much. We're gonna transition the room now and turn to Q&A. I'll ask my ELT colleagues to come up here shortly, but before that, we'll have some mic runners here. Maybe Carla, Lauren, if we could set up properly. We're gonna have about 30 minutes for Q&A before we go upstairs for the nice lunch reception. So why don't we have the group come on up?... All right, fantastic. So if you have a question, please go ahead and just raise your hand, and we can go from there. Maybe first question over, Ed?
Hi. Good morning, guys. Ed Kelly, Wells Fargo. Thank you for all the great detail today. I wanted to start on, I guess maybe a specific question around the guidance and then maybe a little bit more broad. But you didn't talk about 25, Kenny. It seems like that may be a below algo year. I think that's implied in the tax rate and interest expense. Maybe a bit more color there. And then, you know, big picture around the cadence of the guidance. You've laid out a lot of it looks like very compelling initiatives, you know, that should drive growth and profitability. How do we think about, you know, the ramp of that? If we look at current case volumes, you know, you're currently below that level.
So how does that sort of, like, roll in over time? How quickly can those initiatives pay dividends?
Yeah, so let me start with the algo first, Ed. So you are right. The reason why our adjusted EPS growth and OI growth is similar is because of the fact that you do have this headwind on the tax standpoint. This is a GMT rule, and essentially, it's roughly 50-100 bits. Now, to your question, as you look forward, based on what we know today, we think the headwind that we experience at FY 2025, from 2024, that should alleviate and subside in the 2026 and 2027 go-forward range. So with that said, we're still very confident with our algo of 6%-8%, but that headwind of tax should alleviate in the outer years. Hopefully, that helps on the EPS versus the OI side.
Greg, you want to answer the question on the volume over time?
Yes, if you don't mind. So on volume, here's how I kind of think about it, is, you know, we're adding headcount. We added headcount this year. We need to grow the capacity of our sales organization. I think, as most of you know, the headcount takes a little bit of time for it to kick in. So I would say that's kind of the mid- to longer-term, although from a good news standpoint, we've been adding headcount this year, so we'll start to see some of that kick in in the upcoming year. Midterm, I would say, is the Total Team Selling, because we're already seeing tremendous results, we just need to fully deploy it. So we started out early in the year, the first half, deploying 12, a little over 12 different regions.
We've deployed up to 22 now, and we'll continue to deploy throughout this year. So I look at that as more of a midterm. And then short term, I would say the compensation program has the ability to make an immediate change and to drive our salespeople's behavior and to drive results. And it's aligned with the P&L needs that we have in Kenny's plan that he laid out. And then when you layer in proven programs like Sysco Your Way, Perks, where we still have an opportunity to grow, I think that'll also have a positive impact in the short term.
Great. Maybe next question for John, over here.
Hi, thank you. It's John Ivanko, JPMorgan . You know, I certainly understand the cross-selling opportunity between specialty and broadline, especially bringing in a specialty salesperson introduced by the broadline salesperson. But, you know, my question was, if you had an opportunity to integrate, you know, the selling and the products that specialty has into your broadline operating companies, in other words, using the broadline salespeople to sell specialty products, using the trucks, using the operating companies themselves. You know, obviously, it wouldn't be every SKU, but maybe the SKUs that are highest velocity and may have the most relevance in that particular region. You know, is that, You know, are you doing that now? How big of an opportunity is that? You know, certainly, I think customers would like to get deliveries sometimes on one truck as opposed to multiple trucks.
Yeah.
It's better for you, so if you understand the question.
Yeah. So we actually do that now. So many of the products that you have heard about from our specialty companies, whether it's the import products from European Imports, whether it's the Italian products from Greco, the cut steaks that come from Buckhead, Newport, we have all those within our broadline company. Customers buy from specialty, I find, for three reasons, and then there's kind of this fourth one that can drive me a little bit nuts. But the three reasons that they buy from specialty, and I think the reason that the channel is so large, one, they buy because of depth of product. And so when you think about a broadline company, they have 12,000 SKUs. A specialty company might have 2,000, but I'll give you the example about in Modesto, California.
Our broadline company that has 12,000 SKUs stocks 800 produce items. Our specialty company that has 2,000 SKUs stocks 2,000 produce items because they're in a singular category. So the depth that they can go to is different from broadline. That's one reason that they buy. The second reason that they buy is expertise, and we try to bring that expertise to broadline through specialists. But when you're selling one category every day, you're waking up and you're eating, breathing, sleeping produce or specialty meat, you have a greater level of expertise, and so that's the second reason. The third, we can accomplish some of with broadline, which is the nimbleness of a specialty company.
When you look at these smaller specialty companies, they tend to be very agile, smaller trucks, and we're emulating some of that with things like Sysco Your Way, okay? And the Perks program, where we get six days a week delivery. The fourth reason, and this one, is the tougher one to explain, but there are customers that will literally say, "I know it's the same cut steaks. I know it came from the same processing facility. I want to buy it from a specialty company.
... Yeah, and maybe using some recent examples, you know, Greco, for example, is that available nationwide in every Sysco operating company? Is Don available in every Sysco operating company? You know, have you already taken the best, you know, highest velocity products out of those specialty and put it into all of your Broadline operating companies in the U.S.?
Yeah, Don, I'll take that one. I'll just use Greco like you just described. Yeah, it's in three phases. Victoria actually had a chart that kind of showed the different phases. Where we see the greatest potential with Italian, think a huge metro market like Los Angeles, will have a full-fledged Greco facility in that trade area, Greco sales colleagues, Greco trucks, much, much deeper, broader assortment. Think about, halfway between those two markets, Iowa, as an example only, we will use an existing Sysco Broadline house, but we'll stock those Greco facilities in it. Victoria called that a Campus Model. Think even more rural than that, we would stock the best Greco items in the Broadline facility, deliver on the Broadline truck. So that's kind of like a good, better, best, if you will, on the assortment.
With produce and protein, it's give the customer the choice, which is what Greg said. Here in Manhattan, there are some discerning chefs at the highest-end steakhouses, they'll just never let a Broadline truck pull up in front of their restaurant, and we'll, therefore, deliver on a bucket truck. Just so it's a little bit different based on Specialty business. The main point from today is, for each of our Specialty businesses, we're expanding those capabilities, ideally coast to coast, and that's where the $10 billion growth opportunity comes from.
Great.
Maybe next question from Jeff over there.
Thank you. Jeff Bernstein from Barclays. Two questions. The first one, just on the broader macro, you know, lots of talk about the industry easing of late, and you talked about that on your last investor call, although it sounds like you are perhaps bucking the trend with improvement month to month to month, at least over the past few months. But can you just talk about what you think are the primary drivers of the broader slowdown, and how that impacted your thoughts as you were putting together a next three-year outlook? Because presumably, if you were putting this together six or twelve months ago, it might have had a different perspective. I'm just wondering, what is assumed in the current macro? I think you just said stable macro going forward is what's assumed, but I'm not sure what stable is anymore.
So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are as you think of the next few years relative to the current slowdown?
Okay, I'll start with the consumer and what we're seeing. Kenny can talk about the algorithm and the outlook that we have. Continuation of the trends, Jeff, that we were seeing at the exit velocity of the most recent quarter. So it's tougher out there, this year, calendar year, than what we had expected at the beginning of the year. Consumer confidence has been impacted. Our belief is that it's inflation-based, it's menu price at restaurants-based. You can see it across the portfolio of customers that we serve, from QSR to higher end. QSR has been hit the hardest. I think that's pretty clear on the why, as the lower-income customer is struggling more than the higher-income customer, but there's some softening, we believe, tied to menu prices. As I said on our last earnings call, we're not critiquing our customers when we say that.
We're taking ownership, we're taking action, we're doing a lot of good work, mostly in Victoria's space, to reduce cost and pass that value on to our customers. That's through the strategic sourcing capabilities that she talked about, introducing more Sysco brand alternatives. And upstairs, you'll hear more about, pre-cut, ready-cut, taking knives and hours out of the back room of the kitchen. There are several demo examples that will be provided and shown to you upstairs. We need to do more of that. We need to take labor out of the kitchen, save our customers money, and then they'll buy that product from Sysco. So these are the things that we're doing. Specific to the quarter we're in, we're not here to talk about, you know, the quarter that we're in, but a continuation of the trends. You know, there was a tough January.
Quarter sequentially improved as the quarter went on. We've seen a continuation of the strengthening of our performance relative to Q3, and we're confident in our ability to deliver against the guidance that we put out for fiscal 2024. As it relates to 25, I'll just say my piece, we're very confident in the algorithm that Kenny put forward today. We're confident that's achievable, and we're confident in what Kenny says, that say-do ratio. We're going out with guidance, and we're gonna consistently deliver against that guidance over time. So, Kenny, any comments on 25 specifically or the algorithm?
Sure. So, Jeff, the algorithm has 2% inflation, and if you look at the historical CAGRs, the historical averages of the industry, 2%'s been normal. And right now, we're seeing that as we speak. So that's point number one. And we believe 2% bodes well for the industry. This is the, the threshold, as we call it, that we can pass it on to our customers, and they can pass it on to, their customers. That's point number one. Point number two, to your question around, did we consider the current macro landscape as we built the algorithm? The answer is yes. And let me kind of talk about why we're so confident in the algo. First, to your question, we have a lot of data in our company, as Neil mentioned.
We have a lot of data in our company, so we partner with third-party suppliers, partner with banking institutes, and, oh, by the way, we serve a lot of different customers as well, and we have lots of volume going through our shop. So we take all of that and model in as we think about the algo. That's point number one. And point number two, as proven in the past few quarters, Jeff, we had hyperinflation, disinflation, deflation, back to our normal inflation. And Sysco really has proven that given all the levers we have in our P&L, we can execute upon it and drive top-line growth and bottom-line growth while achieving leverage in the P&L. So the answer is yes, and we have levers in the P&L as well.
My follow-up was just on M&A. I think most people think of the food service distribution category as a big opportunity for M&A. I would think in the current environment, the opportunity would be greater because more players are challenged, and that would present opportunity for you. So I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the U.S. and the international opportunity, what those conversations are like. If I recall correctly, your long-term guidance used to be from 50 to 100 basis points of M&A contribution to the top line. Now it's 50. So it seems like whether it's because you guys are just getting bigger or whether you just see smaller and smaller opportunities, but just wondering how you think about that and whether it's purely in broad line.
I know there's been some speculation that you could go into other categories, whether it's convenience or other things that maybe would expand you beyond your traditional customer base, how you think about that M&A? Thank you.
Yeah, so, so on, on the M&A piece, yes, you are correct. We did in our algo is 50 bips of growth, and historically, you are also correct, 50-100 bips. Our business is bigger, right? 50 bips off a few years ago of $50, you know, mid-$50 billion versus, you know, 80 to the algo, you know, past 90. That's something where it's bigger. However, I think the important point here is it's not the size. We don't buy companies to be bigger. That is not our goal. We buy companies to ensure it adds enterprise value, that we can synergize and drive value for our customers as well. So that's point number one. And point number two is, it's important to think through M&A. There's a high ROIC hurdle, right?
So right now, given the environment you pointed out, that is a higher interest rate environment, therefore the WACC is higher for us as well. So the spread between WACC and ROIC has to be healthy. So that's how we think about M&A. We will not buy companies just to be bigger, and for us right now, in the algo, we have roughly 50 basis points. So most of the growth does come from core organic part of our business.
And I'll just plus that last part. We remain consistent on the types of companies that we're interested in, bolt-on acquisitions that add capabilities on our ability to serve restaurants and restaurant-like customers, domestically and internationally. The improvement and success that we're having internationally on profitability is opening the bank doors, he and I, on being willing to approve bolt-on acquisitions in Europe, specifically, Ireland being the most recent example with Ready Chef. As Greg said very well in his prepared remarks, our ability to expand the Sysco play, run the specialty play internationally, is a part of our profit growth algorithm, so that, too, will be a part. So no jumbo acquisitions.
Mm-hmm.
No outside of our core of restaurants at this time planned.
Great.
Maybe a question over there from Jake?
Thanks for taking the question. Jake Bartlett from Truist Securities. My question was the comment on pricing, and you mentioned you have the greatest ability now to kind of, you know, with your flexibility on pricing, to manage margins. I'm wondering how you look at your ability to manage traffic. You know, when we think about case growth versus some of your peers in independents, specifically, you know, you've talked about the sales force and the markets getting a little stretched there, but how much might be just, you know, being a little more conservative on pricing or, you know, focusing a little bit more on margins than you could and maybe will going forward?
Sure, yeah. GB dollars being put in the bank is what pays our bills. I respect and understand, you know, the question. What I'll start with is the following. Here's what I meant by my prepared remarks vis-à-vis we've never been stronger. We've never been better at our ability to make conscious, specific, strategic choices on how to manage that dynamic. During the 18%+ inflation period that we were in, we were able to use our strategic software to efficiently pass that through. Back in the day, you know, Greg led a sales force of 5,000+ people at that time, who would have themselves been making individual decisions on what to pass through or not. The likelihood of our passing through that 18% would have been close to zero because they would have taken too much human filter.
That relationship piece would be impacting some decision making. The opposite is true. During our deflation window, we quickly were able to pass value on to our customers. In the dynamic nature of that up and down at the item level in the spot market, we can make purposeful choices. That's what we mean, and we can execute them everywhere within very tight guardrails. What I communicated today, what we need to do better is react in the moment when a competitor is undercutting you, if you will, usually on a single item. We need to enable our sales rep to be able to answer with a yes or a no at that moment. But again, using our technology, using our software, and we're prepared to be able to do that, and we'll be doing that very soon.
As it relates to your question on volume versus margin trade-offs, I'd just point you to a couple things. One, there's a reason why we run this business at a substantially higher rate of profit than those we compete against. We're disciplined operators who make pragmatic choices for the long-term health of the business. The absolute easiest thing in the world to do is to lower price to get more cases on your truck. Here's what I submit that you should consider. The stickiness of that, low, the reaction from competitor to that, high. It's not a good financial equation. So we need to be very purposeful. We need to be very thoughtful. What we need to be able to do is provide value to our customers.
See, back to Victoria, merchandising, what we want to do is lower our inbound cost to Sysco, so we can pass that value on to our customers, win share profitably. Specialty tends to have a higher margin rate, bolt-on portfolio. A little bit less price shopping happens within specialty. Again, grow in that. And Jake, we need to be mindful about the overall market conditions, and my cute words for it at the end are we need to be right on price. And if the market's getting more competitive, if the market's moving, we need to be mindful of that, we need to be thoughtful about that, and we can't be independent of that activity. We have the ability at the item level to track pricing in the market, and we know at any given time, Sysco's relative competitiveness.
So GB dollars get put in the bank, but I'd say the health of the P&L for the long term is what matters most, and that was one of Kenny's points on we have levers that we can pull to manage. If the macro is gonna be a bit softer, we can manage expenses, profitability, and we're confident in our ab ility to do that.
... Great. Next question, Lauren?
Hey, thank you. A two-part question on the local side. So first, you're growing local headcount, 400-500 people per year. It's up mid-single- to high-single-digit. How do you expect that to translate to local case growth? And then the second part is, I believe you talked about currently being live with 5,000 customers of Total Team Selling. What percentage of your local customers does that represent, and where do you see that ramping? Thank you.
You want to take those? Okay. I'll start with the, with the headcount. So what I would tell you is we, we don't provide an algorithm for the sales adds and how it translates into sales. What we do know is this, as I gave the example earlier, when we hire new sales consultants, within the first year, we start them out with 10-12 customers. Over that first year's period of time, they build that up to 35, roughly. And so we see that growth happen sequentially. Now, keep in mind, too, that the sales consultants are not all added at once. They're layered in through or laddered in throughout the year, each quarter. And so we see it over time. Again, it's probably the...
Of the different actions that I gave, it's probably the slowest to actually show up, and then once you get it going and you have that momentum and you continue to add those 400 or 500 behind it, then you sustain that growth. The second part of the question, could you repeat the part two for me? I'm sorry.
The Total Team Selling customer count-
Yes.
and % of total.
Yeah. So what I would tell you is that we have 5,000 customers today. I would tell you that the opportunity is substantially higher. It could be tenfold that. And so we identify the customers that are not buying product from broadline, Sysco broadline, and they're not buying product from specialty, Sysco specialty. And then we need to go in to do the work to determine whether they're buying from another broadliner or another specialty company. More than likely, they are buying from another specialty company, and those are those Total Team Selling opportunities. So the opportunity is quite large.
Just one thing to add on the headcount. We'll be extremely deliberate and disciplined on the pacing of headcount, meaning when and where we add. We will add them in high-growth markets. It's not one knife cuts all. You know, 400 divided by how many states? No, it's-- we'll be very deliberate on that to ensure we have high return on investment. In terms of timing of investment, we talked about earlier, before on earnings call, there's a lag between when you hire and when the benefits, the full productivity, as we call it, come to fruition. Now, it's not binary, meaning it's not 0% one day, 100% tomorrow. You gain productivity along the way, so with each day, each week, each quarter that passes, Greg and his team will be more productive and more productive.
Therefore, you start paying back a lot earlier than the full productivity side. So those are two points to call out.
Fantastic. John, over here.
So a couple of things with regard to case growth and local case growth, right, and composition. So do you think it'll be within that three-year time horizon, in that kind of 2%-3% range, right, local case growth? Do you think because of the ramp, right, as you start hitting that 5% annually, that there is a ramp such that the exit rate in that three-year period is solidly north of that, that 2%-3%? And then when you think about how that, the composition, new accounts versus existing.
Mm-hmm.
Right, how do you think about that? And then the last part, I think the last analyst day, right, you talked about a 30% penetration wallet share. What's your current thought on that? And is, I mean, the idea was always that this should be logically much higher.
Mm-hmm.
50, 60, and I guess Specialty, you're now confident it can be much higher.
Yes. I'll, I mean, I'll start with the first part of your question, which is the ramp. We don't want you to interpret or infer that the algorithm we provided you is a ramp. It's what we communicated today is that we're going to deliver against that algorithm each year for the next three years, to be clear, and we're confident we can do that. As we're within the range of a guide, we have confidence in our ability to increase our capabilities over time, the Sysco Your Way opportunity, the Specialty opportunity, the global opportunity. Our plan is to, as Kenny said, deliver on a CADU ratio. Today, we went live with guidance. Our plan is to consistently deliver against that, and we're confident we can do that. So that's main point number one. Number two, new customers versus penetration.
We're actually doing really well with penetration right now through a host of activities that we can talk about. We need to hit harder on new customer acquisition. In a tougher macro, in a slowing macro, we need more of our sales colleagues spending more of their time net new prospecting. And Greg talked about that during his main stage remarks. He talked about putting net 400-500 more people on the ground each year for the next three years. He said he's going to seed them with five customers each. That means they need to go hunt for their other 30-35 customers, or else they don't eat, to use a metaphor. They're going to do that. And we take five customers from an existing sales rep to seed them. They, too, want to go out and hunt, and that's where the incrementality of new.
Greg is working on optimizing our compensation program, increasing the importance of new and prospecting in that compensation model, and then remixing base pay versus bonus pay. That, too, will get more motivation behind prospecting. So we're going to push harder on new. I announced that on our last earnings call. That will step up over time. As I think about the third of your three good questions, I'm going to toss to Neil in a second, which is: What could penetration be? Sysco Your Way is the customer group that we're going to really focus on that in Perks. In the chart that he showed, I both love it and I hate it, which shows the box, the two by two. If we had time, we'd flip you to it.
I encourage you to look at the Sysco Your Way in the middle of the chart. It showed you how much we've moved penetration with existing customers, and it showed how much we've acquired net new. It's great that we've moved the needle in those neighborhoods. We can move the needle even further. And we are in hundreds of neighborhoods. So, you know, I'll toss to you that on what we're doing with Perks and with Sysco Your Way to drive penetration.
Yeah.
Improvement.
Yeah, thanks, Kevin, and good question, John. Thank you. You think back to the chart Kevin is speaking of on both those items, you know, we saw an improvement in share of wallet penetration of current customers, and we saw an improvement in the unit share within the neighborhood. Your point on the new customers. The new units improved eight points so far, plenty of room to continue to grow. So even if the macro is going through various cycles, that's a neighborhood we're already serving, and we're at about a 33% unit share today. As I said, that could be 50s. That's growth right there, right in front of us with those new accounts. And that share of wallet, to your point, was mid-30s to mid-40s.
We have customers today that we've talked about that have wallet share at 70, so we know there's a lot of runway, as I said, to be able to do that. And this white glove, high service model that we're speaking of, whether it's Sysco Your Way or a Perks customer, that may not even be in a Sysco Your Way neighborhood, but has that delivery model available to them. We know we can do that there, and that's, that's gonna be gold in those hills for us as we continue that process around Perks, new accounts in Perks and Sysco Your Way service level, we'll continue to see both those numbers increase.
Great. Thanks, Neil. Maybe time for one last question. Brian, I think you were raising your hand earlier.
Yep.
Thank you. Brian, Brian Mullan, Piper Sandler. It actually was about Perks, which you just spoke about. So I think you said there's 12,000 members today. You let us know where you hope you can get that to over the next couple of years. So could you just talk about that sign-up process, what it looks like from the sales force's perspective, and have you already identified the next wave of accounts that you want to target? Because I think not everyone is eligible. And then-
Right.
Related to that, when you get to the fiscal 2027, will this be fully penetrated, or would you, would you see growth in Perks longer term beyond that?
That's a great question. I'll start. I'll invite any of my colleagues to jump in. So yeah, 12,000 members today, a target of 25,000-30,000 members. An important reminder that it's an exclusive club, it's a loyalty program, and it's important that you have certain criteria to be in the program. So we want to be mindful as we grow it going forward, so as not to dilute the value of it. These are large customers. They're profitable customers. They offer a lot of opportunity for us in terms of current value and growth through that penetration and retention that we can offer them through the program. But we got a lot of customers, so there's a lot of opportunity to continue to grow that going forward.
So over this three-year algorithm, essentially double the size of what we currently have today is what we're talking about. A lot of opportunity for us with a Perks customer, with this high service level, oftentimes comes from customers that may not be in a Sysco Your Way neighborhood. Sysco Your Way is fantastic, but it's a very specific definition of a restaurant-dense neighborhood that also has to be within reasonable range of our operating site. We got a lot of awesome customers that may be outside of those parameters, but could fit the bill for the Perks representation. I also mentioned we'll add more loyalty tiers to it, so there'll be more tiers towards membership requirements and more tiers towards level of service for them to have, too.
So I think we'll be able to double the size of it with plenty of room to continue to grow beyond that, because of just the overall size and fragmentation of the customer base that we have.
It's a great question. We love it. I was trying to get back to the one chart that answers it numerically, for one of our customer segments. Neil has the privilege of leading two really powerful programs. For Perks, it's an invitation-only program, like you said. The SEs aren't actually allowed to go offer it unless it's been pre-approved, authorized in the CRM. That technology is managed by Neil's office. It gets served up to Greg's team as what we call a prospect, to then go invite into the club. We don't want to actually rapidly expand it too fast. It would dilute the value of the program, but we know exactly who the targets are. It's a substantial number that we can increase.
I'm actually even more keen, though, to extract more output from those that are currently in the VIP club through penetration, through value-added services, menu optimization, menu design. You know, as John said earlier, we just have such an opportunity to penetrate further. And then the other incredibly compelling program is Sysco Your Way neighborhoods. We're in many hundreds of them. What I wanted to show you is, may surprise you. For those neighborhoods, we actually had fewer, door penetration than our average Sysco neighborhood. On average, we have roughly 50% door share of wallet or door count, and those neighborhoods were below that. And the why is many of them are in urban places, and historically, our penetration is higher in suburban places than urban places. I'll take Dublin as an example.
We've launched four Sysco Your Way neighborhoods in Dublin, and our door count penetration has skyrocketed because we're there every day. The mayor is knocking on every door. We see gold in them hills, to use Neil's term, on door count increase in Sysco Your Way neighborhoods and also in penetration increase because we are nowhere near the ceiling. So taking the existing neighborhoods, hunt harder in them, and with Perks, there'll be a methodical introduction of new invitees into the VIP club. And then fast-forward, your end of your question was the end of the three-year algorithm. What you have to do with a loyalty program every few years is reinvent it, so it wouldn't be throw everybody out and bring everybody back. It'd be bring newness to the program, and yes, we're already working on that. He calls it Perks 2.0.
Yep.
There's a host of good ideas that we're thinking about to introduce to customers with Perks 2.0. Good questions. Thank you.
Great.
Sounds like opportunity to me. So again, thank you all for the time. A replay of the webcast, as well as available slides, will be on the website here shortly. Please join us for the lunch event upstairs in Freedom Hall. A couple of quick things that I'll draw everybody's attention to. If you look at your name badges at both the front as well as the back, there is a subgroup of folks that you will be assigned to, right? So as you go up the stairs, if you are part of Sysco Classic, Sysco Reliance, or Earth Plus, you'll be part of the brand demonstrations. If you're not, then we ask you to continue on with the lunch further deeper into the room.
When you go up the stairs, there will be some friendly Sysco folks guiding you in the right direction. Again, thank you all for coming. This concludes our webcast.