Vulcan has promoted Joe Maresca to Director of Sales-East. Maresca, a 28-year industry veteran (more than half of them at Vulcan), will oversee East Coast dealer sales, familiar territory from his tenure as a Vulcan eastern regional sales manager; he also has been v.p.-national accounts and business manager for the Range unit. David Sealfon has…

Unified Brands has added Walter Trapp as Product Line Specialist for its cooking line. He will manage those products, primarily the Groen brand, while supporting the company’s distribution network. Trapp, who brings a background in foodservice management to the post, also will lead efforts in strategic pricing initiatives, and manage training and tradeshow involvement for…

Carpigiani has tapped Central Marketing Associates as its new rep group for Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. CMA, based in Shawnee Mission, Kans., represents 14 other major equipment brands, including Beverage-Air and Edlund, Carpigiani’s sister companies in Ali Group. Carpigiani is based in Winston-Salem, N.C.

As we often do at the beginning of a new year, we’ve pulled together a reminder of all the sales, acquisitions and mergers from the previous year for our opening FER Dealer Report. And we noticed a curious fact: Lots of deals in the equipment and supplies manufacturing and service and parts segments, but very…

Wolters-Althoff Investments, LLC closed on January 1 its previously announced acquisition of and Gill Ashton Publishing, LLC. WAI, based in Chicago, is the private equity and venture capital arm of the Wolters Family Office headed by former owner and founder of CookTek, Bob Wolters. Evanston, Ill.-based GAP owns Foodservice Equipment Reports and other foodservice equipment-…

The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District is considering whether to regulate restaurants that use wood-fire cooking techniques. Although charbroiler emissions contribute only a tiny portion to the Valley’s bad air, the district is looking into requiring restaurants to install equipment to clean up smoke emissions and filter particles. The air district, which must…

After six years of the federal minimum wage holding steady at $7.25 an hour, 14 states and several cities are moving forward in 2016 with increases to their minimum wage. Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia saw wage increases take effect January 1.…

A pronounced softening in current same-store sales and traffic helped push the

Visits to restaurants grew 1% in 2015, and finally regained the traffic lost during the long foodservice recession, according to data from The NPD Group’s CREST consumer data. And the Rosemont, Ill-based research firm predicts another 1% gain in 2016. “It has been a long slow recovery but the foodservice industry has recovered nearly all…

Gasoline prices sank below the $2 a gallon average over the New Year’s weekend and the outlook for 2016, according to AAA, is for another year of relatively low fuel prices. The drop in energy prices has been a significant factor in improved sales and traffic for foodservice operators throughout 2015. The average annual price…