Salaried Compensation
Cross-Industry Compensation and Benefits Survey
The 2026 Cross-Industry Compensation and Benefits Survey is now closed. Results are expected in late spring.
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.
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.
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.
