Get to know Us

So, a little bit about me.

 I have been around the Restaurant and Food Industry (a.k.a. "The Food Business"), all my life because of my mother. She has tirelessly worked her way up working for various food Distributors (White Swan, Fleming, Sysco and Ben E Keith). From a district sales rep, district sales manager, Business development Manager, Regional V.P. of Sales. I got to go to food shows with her as a kid, I was always amazed at all the different types of food items at a food show that you didn’t see in the grocery stores.

 She would bring home new and exotic food items around Christmas time from Food Brokers. You also learn that items are packed totally different for restaurants than for home. No matter how much you like a certain type of salad dressing you will never finish a gallon of it before it goes bad. Trust me I tried several times as a kid.

 So, when I decided I needed a change and left the Technology Industry a few years ago, (the other family business). I got a chance to work at Key Impact a national food brokerage, at the bottom of the ladder as an Operator Specialist that worked with the Ben E Keith Foods DFW Sales reps. 

 That was a great experience, because my mother works there as a business development manager. So, we got to see each other and even work together more often and had some fun working with all sorts of restaurant owners.

 Food Brokers work very hard and do not get nearly enough credit for what they do. Lugging samples around to customers to try. Setting up and conducting sales meetings for Distributor Reps. Planning, setting up and working Food Shows for distributors and for Restaurant Association events.

 That reminded me of the 90’s when I had a bar band. Setup, perform and teardown then drive home exhausted.

 If you pay attention, you can learn a lot about how the Food Service industry really works being a food broker. They help a restaurant owner or a person thinking about being a restaurant owner try a small portion of a product instead of buying a hole case of an item.  Sometimes we had great hits and sometimes we had some really bad products that we would have to try and build an excitement in. It's amazing how many new products Food Manufactures create that the public never see because the restaurant owner know that no one will really like it, or it will be too much trouble for them to put on their menu. 

 While helping Distributor Reps with existing and new customers with new products and how to add them to their menu. A lot of that interaction is what created the desire for me to do this came from. Working with Keith Reps and with people that wanted to open a restaurant but had no restaurant experience at all. Not even flipping burgers as a teenager. They just had a lot of money or a relative with a lot of money.

 I later left Key Impact to go to work of a Group Purchasing Organization called Dining Alliance. So, I got to see at least in theory how special programs setup with a large Broadline Food Distributor could bring extra savings and buying power to Restaurant Owners. This particular Group Purchasing Organization unlike most Group Purchasing organizations also had specialty distributor (Produce, Dairy, Cleaning Chemicals, Linens and Uniforms, Meat/Seafood, Non-Foods, Soft drink) programs that covered those areas if a restaurant owner didn’t want to work with the large distributor that Dining Alliance had picked to work with exclusively for that region.

 So, this allowed me to see other ways a restaurant owner possibly could save on the way they do business. It also allowed me to meet people that worked for those companies and get a better idea of how they specialty distributors work and could in some case add a special value to their customers that a large distributor might not be able to. I will go over in greater detail later in what and how a Group Purchasing Organization (G.P.O) can do for a customer, in theory later.

 Also, working for a GPO allows another viewpoint of how the Food Industry works pricing between distributors and manufactures and the friction that sometimes causes. Before I worked as a Food Broker, I had always only seen it from a Broadline Distributor point of view, then a Broker point of view and finally from a Group Purchasing Organization point of view.

 I came back to the Food Broker side of things for a short time with Waypoint, once again being dedicated to working with the sales rep of Ben E Keith DFW until Waypoint's Parent company Advantage Solutions sold Waypoint and it was   acquired by their competitor Key Impact. I had a great time while it lasted but nothing ever remains the same.

 These and other experience allowed me to meet and befriend Food Manufactures, Chiefs, Restaurant owners, Sales reps, and other food brokers all that represent a vast resource to someone that is looking to get into the restaurant or bar business. Or a person that needs a fresh point of view on ways to improve how their business is being run.

 I have always loved creating informative and timely content that helps people do their job better and more profitable.  So, this outlet will allow me to do that in a field that almost everyone likes. Eating, have a good beverage and enjoying Life. Because you only live once!!!

 

So once again,

 WELCOME to RESTAURANTBARFOOD.COM