Two months from now, the Foodservice Equipment Distributors Association will be hosting its 2015 Convention in Phoenix, and the association is making a concerted effort to bring in some newer, younger voices to the meeting.FEDA is offering a new registration category aimed at encouraging its member firms to bring a “Rising Star Decision Maker” to…
Edlund Co., the Burlington, Vt., company celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, has named B.C. Roberts as its director of chain accounts. Formerly the director of sales-eastern region, he will now manage relationships with foodservice chains and work with chain-oriented dealers. Roberts also will continue managing sales in the Carolinas. Marie Boyd succeeds Roberts in…
T&S Brass and Bronze Works has been singled out by IndustryWeek magazine as having one of the best manufacturing plants in North America. The publication recognized T&S last week as one of six winners in its 25th annual Best Plants competition. IndustryWeek editors cited the Travelers Rest, S.C., plant as an efficient manufacturing operation dedicated…
Meiko USA has promoted Danielle Mason to oversee strategic sales and business development. Mason, formerly Meiko’s sales and customer service operations manager, will work closely with the Nashville-based manufacturer’s regional sales managers, sales rep network and buying groups. Independent consultant Celeste Raines has joined the company as its new product and sales training specialist to…
As of this month, one can count only16
Potbelly Sandwich Works has signed up franchisees to open 10 shops in London over the next five years. Those would be the Chicago sandwich chain’s first outlets in Europe. Potbelly, which has 347 stores, expanded into the Middle East in 2012, where it operates a dozen franchise stores in Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab…
The improving jobs market and falling gasoline prices are among the factors underlying an upward revision of Technomic Inc.’s 2015 forecast of foodservice operator sales, released to the firm’s customers last week. Technomic now forecasts total foodservice industry sales will grow 3.9% in current dollars with real growth pegged at 1.5%. This compares with the…
It’s conventional wisdom that when gasoline prices come down, foodservice sales—at least at commercial operations—go up. It’s conventional wisdom because there is a huge body of evidence to support it. So we were taken back a bit when Joe Pawlak, v.p, at Technomic, told us last week that while lower gasoline prices are indeed a…
Wholesale food prices fell for the second consecutive month in December, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Restaurant Association, while menu and grocery-store prices continued to rise, pushed higher by earlier run-ups in wholesale prices. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and others are predicting food prices should stabilize in the…
State taxing bodies have finally crossed the fiscal “trough.” State tax revenues grew 4% on a quarter versus year prior basis in the third quarter 2014, according to preliminary data on 48 of the 50 states compiled by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, Albany, N.Y. The return to growth follows a widely anticipated slowing and…