Dealers And FER’s MUFES

As I write this, we are leaving Austin, Texas, where we just staged our biennial Multiunit Foodservice Equipment Symposium (MUFES) at the Barton Creek Resort. It was our eighth chain-oriented MUFES since 2002, and our 11^th overall. (We’ve done three other MUFES meetings for fast-growing chains and noncommercial operators.)

It was another great meeting with two full days of leading-edge technology and equipment-and-supplies multiunit function best-practices content, some 60 operators from chains large, medium and small, and an equal number of supplier folks. We had another day of golf and brewery tours and an evening in downtown Austin, one of the coolest—and weirdest—towns in the world. You can still see the program agenda here.

What always surprises us is that more dealers aren’t beating down our doors to come to the meeting. Not that we don’t have dealer support. Wasserstrom, both the dealer company and fabricating manufacturer, has been a sponsor of every single chain-oriented MUFES. Franke, a kitchen equipment supplier (KES) as the big chains call them, but what we used to call a dealer-fabricator, has been a long-time supporter. Stafford-Smith has sponsored the last three MUFES meetings, both chain and noncommercial. And we had C&T Design at this latest MUFES for the first time. TriMark USA, Edward Don, Bargreen Ellingson, KaTom, and In Step Foodservice have also attended one meeting or another.

But even with the first four companies named above fully engaged with this latest MUFES, a number of operators and manufacturers raised the question of why more dealers don’t attend.

I explained we consider dealers suppliers—we are primarily a multiunit operator magazine after all—and we require supplier attendees to be advertisers (as all the companies named above have been) to be invited to come to MUFES.

Now our great friends from Wasserstrom, Franke, Stafford-Smith and C&T Design will probably be mad we even brought this up. But let me say that many of you—particularly companies that do lots of business with chains large and small—are missing a wonderful opportunity to interact the the biggest, fastest growing and most sophisticated buyers of E&S in the U.S. and the world. And what is it you do? Oh, you sell E&S.

Just call me and I’ll explain how you can be part of the next MUFES. It’s not until late January 2018 so you have plenty of  time.

Cheers,

Robin Ashton

Publisher