We’ve been very busy the past three months getting ready for The NAFEM Show Feb. 7-9. We produced three big issues for December, January and February, featuring our redesign of the magazine. We re-launched our new digital edition. We produced special product editions in print and, as you saw earlier this week, electronically. And not…

Time is running out to pay membership dues to the

Ace Mart Restaurant Supply has named employee Bud Herrmann as recipient of its second annual Gus Award. Hermann received the award at a presentation ceremony during the annual Kitchen Equipment & New Technology Expo in Flower Mound, Texas. The show’s sponsors, Forbes, Hever & Wallace, a rep firm and longtime business associate of Ace Mart,…

I’ve had two really interesting interviews in the past couple weeks. One was with Phil Dei Dolori and Dean Landeche at Manitowoc Foodservice and another with Selim Bassoul at Middleby. While the original topics were totally different—Manitowoc’s manufacturing strategy and Viking’s acquisition of Viking Range—both interviews came around to what operators in the current U.S.…

The brokers and investment bankers that help equipment and supplies companies buy and sell other companies had a very busy 2012. Foodservice Equipment Reports and our forecasting partner John Muldowney, v.p.-marketing at Alto-Shaam, counted 22 transactions completed or announced during the year, more than double the 10 recorded in ’11. A number of factors drove…

Anthony Mazur, past president and founding father of Manufacturers’ Agents for the Food Service Industry, passed away Jan. 4. He was 97. Mazur, of A.E. Mazur Associates, Philadelphia, was a tireless supporter of MAFSI since becoming a founding member in 1949. He was the association’s longest-standing member. In a letter to MAFSI members, the association’s…

Tom Ward, who spent 33 years in sales with Wells Mfg. Co., died Dec. 21, 2012 of complications from Alzheimer’s. He was 72. George Thomas Ward spent his youth on his family’s Wiley City, Wash., hop and cattle ranch. In 1972, after coaching the Yakima ski team and working for Head Ski Co., Ward joined…

The NAFEM Show is only weeks away. Among the associations planning concurrent seminars and meetings is the website for the $39 per person seminar.

A fall off the so-called fiscal cliff was skirted by Congress’s New Year’s passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which included a number of tax breaks for small-business owners and foodservice operators. The legislation contains a long list of temporary tax provisions that will be extended for a year, including a provision allowing businesses…

Dozens of Cleveland residents and business owners voiced their opposition to a proposed McDonald’s outlet abutting a residential area that they say would dangerously increase traffic with a double-lane drive-through. But it wasn’t the location that led a Cleveland planning commission to veto the outlet on Nov. 15. It was the unit’s size and its…