Laumont: Mushroom wholesalers
40 years after its creation, Laumont has positioned itself as a world reference in the sale and distribution of truffles and mushrooms. This has been possible thanks to constant innovation and constant attention to the needs of all its customers.
Laumont controls the process of harvesting mushrooms and truffles, manages the handling and cleaning of mushrooms and truffles, and distributes them worldwide with great efficiency and speed.
The start of the route: the collectors
Being a mushroom wholesaler requires very good organization to be able to offer freshly harvested mushrooms on our markets every day.
At the beginning of the route is the collector, the person who goes into the forest to collect mushrooms. Laumont has many points of sale where mushrooms and truffles are bought daily on the edge of the forest or a few kilometers away. This is to guarantee a 100% fresh product which, thanks to the organized structure, very quickly reaches its final point of sale. The process of distributing mushrooms has only just begun.
Distribution of truffles and mushrooms: sales agents in the field
Each of these points of sale is managed by a sales agent in the field. He is responsible for buying truffles or mushrooms and sending them to distribution centers or markets.
Laumont is present with a stall in three of the most important wholesale markets in Spain: Mercabarna (Barcelona), Mercamadrid and Mercabilbao. It also has a mushroom selection center in Valladolid and a truffle selection center in Tàrrega (Lleida). This is why it is important to know at all times the needs of each market and to distribute the product in a homogeneous way to meet the demand of each point of sale.
Being a wholesaler of truffles and mushrooms means efficiently managing this whole process before reaching the final stage: sale to the end customer.
Decide what, how and where
Before the freshly harvested mushrooms reach their point of sale, they can go through sorting and cleaning processes, in which it is determined which mushrooms will be used for sale fresh and which will undergo another process, such as dehydration or freezing.
For mushroom wholesalers, this step is very important because it is also necessary to think about the demand for mushrooms when they are not in season, and it is impossible to offer the fresh product on the market.
Markets, the barometer of mushroom wholesalers
When the mushrooms are ready for final sale, they reach the markets. The mushroom wholesalers offer the final product. All kinds of customers negotiate and buy in the markets: restaurateurs, large distributors, greengrocers...
When the mushroom season arrives (autumn), the markets explode and their activity is practically uninterrupted : 24 hours a day, movements manage the collection and distribution of mushrooms so that they are available from the morning in all Lamont’s markets and centers: the fresher the mushrooms, the better.
Online mushroom distribution
With the aim of streamlining the purchasing process and making the customer the main actor, online stores have been created for professional customers (www.laumont.eu) as well as for individuals (www.laumontshop.uk).
Innovation is one of the key elements of Laumont and that is why, in recent years, several projects have been carried out to digitize many of the processes involved in the distribution of truffles and mushrooms, as an application to manage the purchases, a computerized system to quickly count the weight of purchases and the creation of several online shops focused on different markets.