Salaried Compensation
Cross-Industry Compensation and Benefits Survey
The 2026 Cross-Industry Compensation and Benefits Survey is now open.
This survey includes recruitment and retention, benefits (healthcare, retirement, PTO, etc.), and position-specific compensation covering 35+ executive, salaried and sales positions in wholesale distribution. This survey was last conducted in 2024 among nearly 600 wholesale distribution companies, representing nearly 9,000 locations. The results provide foodservice distributors a better understanding of how your company’s practices compare in the job market.
Participating companies receive free, exclusive access to full results and online reporting tools that won’t be available to non-participants. An aggregate PDF report will be made available for purchase to non-participating companies. Results are expected in late spring 2026.
Deadline for submitting data is March 16, 2026.
NEW THIS YEAR: For the 2026 survey, compensation data will primarily be collected using an incumbent-based approach. This means organizations will report compensation for individual employees matched to standardized survey job titles, rather than providing position-level averages.
This approach allows for more accurate and comparable results across experience levels, locations, and company sizes, improving the overall quality and usefulness of the benchmarking data. To simplify reporting, survey job titles and locations are selected from pre-populated drop-down lists, and participants report only the positions they employ. For companies where manual entry is not practical, alternative submission options (such as HRIS data exports) are available upon request. Should you be unable to provide incumbent-based data (vs position averages) but still want to participate in the survey, please contact us for options.
Survey instructions:
- Go to https://compensationbenchmarking.com/IFDA
- Enter your email and click on the “Continue” button.
- If you do not have an account from participating in previous IFDA compensation surveys, you will be directed to a registration page to create an account.
- If you have an account, it will request that you enter your password. Please note that this is the password you’ve previously used for surveys in this platform; it is not linked to your regular IFDA website member login.
- If you don’t remember your password, click “Forgot Password?”
- Make sure “International Foodservice Distributors Association” is selected in the list of participating trade associations and click “Continue.”
Survey data submission options
- Complete the survey online using the section headers on the menu on the right side of the screen. Click the “Save” button on the bottom regularly, and if you wish to return to enter additional data at a later time. Please note there are several sections to be completed. When all sections are completed, return to the survey home page and click “Submit Survey” to indicate that you’re finished.
- If you participated in this survey in 2022, you may transfer that data to the 2024 survey and update as necessary rather than re-typing data (for example, company profile information and healthcare benefits) by choosing the “Transfer Data” option on the left menu.
- You may download the survey questionnaire to complete offline by choosing “Excel Survey” on the left menu. Please note the multiple survey sections appear as tabs on the bottom when you open the file. When completed, upload your file by choosing the “File Upload” option on the left menu in the survey platform.
- You may download the fillable “PDF Survey” to complete offline. When completed, upload your file by choosing the “File Upload” option on the left menu in the survey platform.
Adding users to your company’s account
- After logging in to the online platform, select “Add User.”
- Enter the email address and name of your colleague, then select the level of access you’d like to assign to the new user:
- Admin — gives the user access to the survey form, the reports, AND allows them to add/remove users.
- Survey — gives the user survey access. This option is only relevant if a survey is active.
- Report — gives the user access to the static reports and reporting tools once results are available.
- Click the “Add User” button.
- After a user is added to your company, the system will send an email to that person containing their auto-generated login credentials.
For questions regarding login, adding users and technical issues, contact Industry Insights’ Jenny Tweed at 614-389-2100, or comp@industryinsights.com.
Participants receive:
1. Cross-Industry Compensation & Benefits Report PDF – a report that includes compensation- and benefits-related statistics for 35+ executive, salaried and sales positions in the wholesale/distribution industry. The report includes data from hundreds of companies representing membership of 21 trade associations, including IFDA.
2. Excel Results – a non-abridged version of the survey results. The file reports the data in aggregate form and includes more data cuts than could be reasonably included in the PDF report.
3. Cross-Industry Company Compensation Report (CCR) PDF – a customized report of your company’s compensation and benefits data shown alongside the appropriate cross-industry comparatives. This report provides you an easy means for interpreting the results.
4. Online Reporting Tools – Interactive online reporting tools that allow users to filter the results by their own selected criteria to build your own report.
IFDA engaged Industry Insights, an independent research company, to collect and compile the results of the study. Industry Insights has more than 40 years of experience in conducting confidential, compensation benchmarking studies of this nature. The survey is hosted and maintained on a secure server outside of IFDA’s website to keep your data safe and confidential.
For questions about IFDA’s compensation surveys and other research, contact Annika Stensson at astensson@ifdaonline.org.
