significant buyers of nuts, including food retailers, commercial ingredient users and contract packaging customers. Selling through multiple distribution channels allows us to generate multiple revenue opportunities for the nuts we process. For example, pecan halves could be sold to food retailers under our
brand, and pecan pieces could be sold to commercial ingredient users. We process and sell all major nut types consumed in the United States, including peanuts, pecans, cashews, walnuts and almonds (our major nut types) in a wide variety of innovative packaging, thus offering our customers a complete nut product offering.
Our principal products are raw and processed nuts. These products accounted for approximately 74%, 78% and 79% of our gross sales for fiscal 2020, fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2018, respectively. The nut product line includes almonds, pecans, peanuts, black walnuts, English walnuts, cashews, macadamia nuts, pistachios, pine nuts, Brazil nuts and filberts. Our nut products are sold in numerous package styles and sizes and we offer our nut products in a variety of different styles and seasonings. We sell our products domestically to retailers and wholesalers as well as to commercial ingredient and contract packaging customers. We also sell certain of our products to foreign customers in the retail, contract packaging and commercial ingredient markets. For more information about our revenues in our various distribution channels, see Part II, Item 8 — “Financial Statements and Supplementary Data”.
We acquire all of our peanuts and walnuts directly from domestic growers. The majority of our pecans are acquired from domestic growers with the remainder acquired from growers in Mexico. We purchase the balance of our raw nuts from importers, trading companies and domestic processors.
We manufacture and market peanut butter in several sizes and varieties. We also market and distribute, and in many cases process and manufacture, a wide assortment of other food and snack products. These other products include snack mixes, salad toppings, snacks, snack bites, trail mixes, dried fruit and chocolate and yogurt coated products sold to retailers and wholesalers; baking ingredients sold to retailers, wholesalers, and commercial ingredient customers; bulk food products sold to retail and commercial ingredient users; an assortment of sunflower kernels, pepitas, snack mixes, almond butter, cashew butter, candy and confections, corn snacks, chickpea snacks, sesame sticks and other sesame snack products sold to retail supermarkets, mass merchandisers and commercial ingredient users and a wide variety of toppings for ice cream and yogurt sold to commercial ingredient users.
(iii) Customers and Channels
We sell our products to approximately 275 customers through the consumer, commercial ingredient and contract packaging distribution channels. The consumer channel supplies
nut-based
products, including consumer-packaged and bulk products, to retailers including supermarket chains, wholesalers, supercenters, internet retailers and other retail outlets, across the United States. We sell products through the consumer channel under our brand names, including the
,
Orchard Valley Harvest, Squirrel Brand, Southern Style Nuts
and
brands, as well as under our customers’ private brands. The commercial ingredient channel supplies
nut-based
products to other manufacturers to use as ingredients in their final food products such as bakery, confection, cereal and ice cream, and produces
nut-based
products that are customized to the specifications of chefs, national restaurant chains, foodservice distributors, fast food chains, institutions and hotel kitchens. We sell products through the commercial ingredient channel under our
brand and our customers’ private brands. Our contract packaging channel produces and packages
nut-based
snacks for food manufacturers and marketers under their brand name.
We are dependent on a few significant customers for a majority of our total net sales, particularly in the consumer channel. Net sales to
Wal-Mart
Stores, Inc. accounted for approximately 33% of our net sales for fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2019 and 30% of our net sales for fiscal 2018. Net sales to Target Corporation accounted for approximately 12% of our net sales for fiscal 2020, 10% of our net sales for fiscal 2019 and 13% our net sales for fiscal 2018. Net sales to PepsiCo, Inc. accounted for approximately 11% of our net sales for fiscal 2018. No other customer accounted for more than 10% of net sales for any period presented.
(iv) Sales and Distribution
We market our products through our own sales department and through a network of approximately 60 independent brokers and various independent distributors and suppliers, including group purchasing organizations.
We distribute products from each of our principal facilities. The majority of our products are shipped from our facilities by contract and common carriers.
We operate a retail store at our Elgin headquarters. This store sells
snack and baking products,
Orchard Valley Harvest, Squirrel Brand
and
products, bulk foods and other products produced by us and other vendors.