The Vollrath Company is celebrating the 140th anniversary of its founding.In 1874, Jacob J. Vollrath established the Sheboygan Cast Steel Co. in Sheboygan, Wis., to produce items including railroad frogs (a common crossing rail), cooking ranges and agricultural implements. Two years later, his eldest son, Andrew, returned from Germany where he’d studied the art of…

Friday marks the deadline to apply for the 2015 Kitchen Innovations Awards. Now in their 11th year, the National Restaurant Association’s KI Awards honor meaningful advancements in foodservice equipment and technology and give suppliers of these cutting-edge products the opportunity to gain industrywide visibility. Recipients will be announced in March and exhibited and demonstrated two…

Apparently, a lot of dealers are misjudging their company’s competitive edge and not focusing on how their edge likely matches that of their competitors. In November, FEDA will present a webinar to help its members answer the key question: “What Is Your Company’s Competitive Edge?” The program, aimed at sales managers and senior executive management,…

Things were looking a little dicey early in the year as brutal winter weather battered many foodservice operators in North America. Now that we finally have all of the numbers in on the second quarter, we can safely say most suppliers of equipment and supplies weathered the storms. But the reports from MAFSI and from…

Robust chain and international growth helped juice combined revenues of eight large publicly reporting foodservice equipment and supplies companies 6.6% in the second quarter of 2014, compared with the same quarter in 2013. The increase follows a strong first-quarter gain of 7.4%. The eight companies’ combined revenues exceed $4 billion annually. The public company numbers…

Singer Equipment Co. has opened a new branch in Bellmawr, N.J. The new 78,000-sq.-ft. facility includes a store, state-of-the-art test kitchen and training facility, sales office and warehouse to help the Elverson, Pa.-based dealer support its expansion in the greater Philadelphia marketplace as well its national chain division. Singer is the country’s sixth largest dealer,…

The Middleby Corp. announced on Sept. 8 that it had acquired Concordia Coffee Co., a maker of automated and self-service coffee and espresso machines for the commercial foodservice and c-store industries. The 10-year old Seattle-based firm sells its machines to c-store, hotel, restaurant chain, and institutional customers. It has approximately $15 million in annual revenues.

Alto-Shaam hosted its Sixth Annual Jerry Maahs Memorial Golf Outing on Aug. 9, raising more than $100,000 for the

A new regional show will launch next year when the North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Expo kicks off Sept. 21-22, 2015, at the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, N.C. The show is being developed with the support of the North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association, which has partnered with Exposition Development Co., which operates numerous…

Burger King Worldwide announced on Aug. 26 that it would purchase Tim Hortons, the Canadian doughnut and coffee chain, for about $11.4 billion. The deal, which will create the world’s third-largest quick- service restaurant company, is the biggest-ever acquisition of a restaurant chain. The merged chains create a strong competitor to McDonald’s and Yum! Brands;…