The values of hard work and personalized service have guided The Wasserstrom Company for more than 100 years. Established in 1902 when founder Nathan Wasserstrom began selling kitchen supplies from a horse-drawn cart, The Wasserstrom Company has grown to become a leading national supplier to the foodservice industry.
Wasserstrom carries one of the most diverse and comprehensive product lines in the industry, offering everything from tabletop items, kitchen supplies, service and storage products and maintenance tools to foodservice furnishings, fixtures, large and small equipment, millwork and custom fabricated stainless. Its extensive inventory includes a wide variety of foodservice products from the industry’s leading manufacturers as well as specialized items that are carried to accommodate their customer’s specific needs.
It’s not often that companies want their competition to succeed, but Paulaner HP USA has found that the success of the craft beer market has only increased demand for its own product. President and CEO Jeff Coleman became familiar with Paulaner – a brand of beers that began being brewed by monks in the early 1500s, and the leading Munich, Germany Brewery since 1634 – in the 1980s, and became an importer for the brand in 1987. That ended in 2003 when Heineken–Star Brands took over USA marketing and sales. Then in 2009, Paulaner Brewery and Coleman got back together, forming a Paulaner majority-owned joint venture with Coleman’s Distinguished Brands International.
When a company is doing something well in one or several aspects of its business, it doesn’t take long for customers, suppliers and its market as a whole to notice. New England Wine & Spirits Inc. – an importer and distributor of wines, beers and other beverages based in Connecticut – is a great example of this, based on the number of awards the company has won throughout its 25-year tenure in the industry. In recent years, New England Wine & Spirits has been recognized as the Best New Distributor and received the Wine Adventure Hero Award from California-based Wente Family Vineyards; Seghesio Winery of California selected four of New England Wine & Spirits’ salespeople to enter is Ambassador Club; and the entire company was chosen to entire the Ambassador Club of Shingleback Wines in Australia.
As an independent, family owned company in an industry dominated by large, national corporations, Kohl Wholesale stands out in the distribution world. “There’s fewer companies like us around now than there were 20 years ago,” says Greg Whitney, director of marketing for the Quincy, Ill.-based company. “What sets us apart from our more than 60 competitors is our go-to-market strategy, which is our true emphasis on service to the customer.”
Not all sunflower seeds are created equal; some are actually engineered to be bigger, meatier and tastier. In the case of CHS Sunflower, the North Dakota company has created a variety of hybrid sunflower seeds to meet the expectations of customers in the United States and abroad.
Bruce Fjelde, sales manager for CHS, notes that its hybrid seeds have solidified the company’s position in the market. “Our new hybrids are a larger type of inshell seed that is preferred in almost all the export markets,” he says. “So they have helped us gain some markets and maintain some markets; for example, in the Middle East, Spain, Israel and Greece.”
Musical front man for the prog rock bands A Perfect Circle, Tool and Puscifer, Maynard James Keenan also is spearheading efforts to elevate Arizona wines in the minds of wine connoisseurs worldwide and to champion his own wine label, Caduceus Cellars.
“We’re such a small, growing industry,” Keenan points out. He concedes that not much Arizona wine is being distributed outside the state’s borders. “This is definitely one of those industries that is about baby steps, and the truth is in the bottle,” Keenan insists. “Once we’ve established a profile for a bottle, you can taste Arizona in the bottle. You can’t fake that.”
elling fresh produce runs in Angelo Benandi’s family. His father used to bring fresh produce such as watermelons and pumpkins from his family farm to sell at New Orleans’ French Market, and that’s where he got his first taste of the produce business. After many years of helping his father sell produce in the French Market, Benandi went into business for himself, establishing A.J.’s Produce Co. Inc. in 1983 as a wholesaler of fruits and vegetables.
Providing the “personal touch” in its service to customers has always been important to Val’s Distributing Co. The Tulsa, Okla.-based company formed in 1976, shortly after the opening of a large regional grocery distribution center changed the way meat packers in its market interfaced with smaller retailers. This created a service niche Val’s Distributing was more than happy to fill.
“Up to that point, all meat packers had been dealing directly with stores, but afterward they no longer ran trucks directly to independent retailers,” co-owner Ken Grabow says. “Our founders, Val Brewer and Vern Langenberg, felt there was still a need for someone to deal directly to independent retailers, so we consolidated the stock of several meat companies into one place and started distributing directly to stores.”
Search
Our Blog
Contact
Food and Drink Magazine
79 West Monroe St., Suite 400
Chicago, IL 60603
