"Brilliant organisation"

Brilliant organisation. As a brand, as a wholesaler, as an employer. Led by values, thoughtful about what they do. I love their products - when I buy Suma stuff i know I’m supporting an equal pay, worker owned company that treats their people, customers, and whole supply chain with care and respect. Ignore the negative reviews - it looks to be like a malicious campaign.

"Regular food group customer"

I order from Suma regularly for our local food group, we love their ethos and I feel proud to be a customer.
Their own brand products are good value and their organic and fair-trade range are brilliant. I'm particularly impressed with their new vegan products.

"The bad reviews are a nonsense."

Firstly reading the bad reviews it seems pretty clear that they're mostly a campaign on a single issue. Not even clear any are even customers. Secondly they're a great company with great products that are actually trying to do something better. Always buy their stuff when I see it.

"A valued supplier"

A valued supplier

"WT bad reviews"

What the , bad reviews, give them some slack, they try hard, sure there are delivery problems but they drivers are always very friendly. Problems are sorted out quickly by email or phone call. you deal with real people trying their best.

"How are Suma still in business? Same problems year on year."

You have no idea what’s in stock and available for you at the time of placing an order via their website. They just invoice you a day or two before delivery and you get what’s available, that’s if they pick the order correctly as mistakes are frequent. Our latest order almost everything we wanted was unavailable and we just got a few lines that we added to the order to meet the MOQ for free delivery. Lines which we could get cheaper elsewhere.

Error rate on order picking is high, but used to be much worse. Suma used to have a ludicrous rate of mistakes on orders we’d make with them. It was literally 1 in 3 orders that we’d receive lines we hadn’t ordered and be missing the lines we had ordered. This has improved in recent years but they’re still making errors at a high rate judging on our last few orders.

We tend to order items which are small, so could easily be sent via a next day parcel courier. But Suma insist on sending every order, big or small, on huge HGVs on fixed weekly slots. This isn’t very convenient. It can’t possibly be cheaper for Suma to use the HGVs for every single order regardless of size, so why do it?

The attitude and manner of their staff is inconsistent. Soma have been really kind and helpful but I’ve also had a few dealings with staff that are quite passive-aggressive and rude. They don’t seem to have the same fear of being rude to customers that conventional companies have, with Suma being a co-operative, I imagine it’s hard to fire badly performing workers. Everyone is on the same pay regardless of ability or performance and there likely must be a committee meeting to sack someone. The company structure is probably one of the main reasons the persistent problems just aren’t being addressed, as they can’t bring in a good CEO and shake things up.

The main takeaway I hope whoever reads this has is, why should we shop with you when we can get everything cheaper elsewhere, with next day delivery and we actually receive what we order? Your ethical pluses aren’t really pluses, as every dairy cow is mistreated and slaughtered in the end, so being a vegetarian supplier doesn’t really make any difference to us.

"You are better off buying elsewhere and saving the stress"

I’ve been a customer of Suma since last year and I have had so many issues!

1) The stock control system needs an over haul…. NOW! Items state that they are in stock when I don’t find out they are not until just before I get my delivery. I ordered £400 worth of vital stock for my small business and I only received £162 of it. I have lost customers because I’ve told them the stock is coming in when it doesn’t. Like seriously your relation with Ecozone and Moo Free need fixing!!

2) They have taped up a box with a product in it, when I need the box for display purposes and now I can’t use it!

3) The delivery driver has just travelled across the country just to deliver me a few small parcels because of point 1. This should have been posted and saved the environmental impact it caused.

4) The minimum spend is £350 + VAT with only 7 days payment?!!!!! This is crazy for such a large company. 30 days and I could forgive the £350, or 7 days if it was £200.

The only reason I have used Suma is because of the Gluten Free Pasta and Oils. It costs me more money to order the other bits when I have direct wholesale accounts with the other company’s. For example I have a wholesale account with Tony’s. But I ended up ordering a few boxes from Suma purely because of this spend minimum.

5) I accidentally didn’t hit the stupid £350 minimum and no one told me…. I just didn’t get a delivery and had to call up myself. No automatic email, in fact I got an email from the sales team telling me they processed it!!!! Because of this I had to wait an extra week for the stock (not that it mattered as half of it wasn’t delivered!)

Because of all of this I will be finding an alternative supplier and eventually stopping my orders through Suma.

The only positive side to Suma has been the delivery drivers who have been very nice, and they are the poor people who get the brunt of all your issues.

Sort it out, it’s absolutely shocking.

"They deliver goods with next to no shelf life and just expect small independent shops to take the loss."

They deliver goods with next to no shelf life and just expect small independent shops to take the loss.

"This company still participates in the…"

This company still participates in the torture of animals because of its refusal to drop Delamere Dairy.

"SUMA's unpleasant Tuscan Bean Soup and their unsatisfactory response"

I am writing this review about a particular SUMA product - their Organic Tuscan Bean Soup and also about their rather unsatisfactory response to my complaint.

I bought several tins of this soup to try for the first time - thinking that because it was a SUMA product, it was surely guaranteed to be tasty and of great quality - how wrong and disappointed I was - this soup is extremely weak in flavour and body - it lacks a pleasant taste or a kick and instead has a strange perfume taste that is hard to place as to why it is there. It lacks any kind of richness or body and instead corn flour has been used to thicken what would presumably just be watery tomato liquid - giving it a translucent, glue-like appearance.
All in, an unpleasant experience and at a price bracket that ranks with some of the highest quality tinned soups on the shelves.
I submitted a complaint direct to SUMA and the member of staff from Quality Control who replied actually agreed with me that it wasn't the best-tasting of soups yet they failed to offer any kind of re- embursment for my experience - so I would say SUMA not only need to seriously review their recipe for this product but also need to take a few lessons on the importance of keeping their dis-satisfied customers happy.

An update: still waiting for SUMA's response...