Annual banquets and award ceremonies are staples of most companies, but for Encanto Restaurants Inc., employee recognition is a daily occurrence. “What differentiates us is a culture of recognition,” CEO José Ribas says of the Puerto Rico-based quick-service restaurant franchisee. “It’s not uncommon to walk into our restaurant support center and see one employee publicly recognize another for a specific act, and tell them in front of their peers about why what they did is deserving of recognition.”
When it comes to seafood, Louisiana Foods Global Seafood Source will do whatever it takes to separate itself in the industry and deliver what a client demands. “One of our main things is that we are a full-service wholesale seafood distributor and processor, and we also manufacture products,” owner Jim Gossen states. “Everything we do is related to seafood.”
It’s one of the most interesting paradoxes of modern living – a single vegetable that was still rooted in the ground hundreds of miles away only a few days ago ends up on your dinner table today, no less fresh than if you had just harvested it yourself. With today’s system of food distribution, it’s a mundane occurrence, but the ubiquity of fresh vegetables should make the accomplishment no less astonishing.
As a producer of wholesale, private-label and custom bakery goods popular among national restaurant chains, Fairfield, Ohio-based Foxtail Foods celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with decadent new offerings, steady profits and a promising expansion into retail. “We are a small, niche baker,” President Lonnie Howard notes. “But through our growth over the past few years, we are becoming more and more prominent in the industry.”
Heritage Frozen Foods Ltd. – maker of CHEEMO® pierogies – has earned a leading position among pierogie producers thanks to its commitment to innovation, efficiency and customer satisfaction, says Taylor Johnson, director of national sales. According to AC Nielsen data, he notes, Heritage Frozen Foods produces four of the top-10 dinner/entrée items within the western Canada grocery category.
Philadelphia-style pizza is similar to other East Coast varieties, like New York or New Haven – thin crust, fresh ingredients, nothing frozen – but with a Philadelphian twist. Acquired in September by Bella Petrella Holding, Westshore Pizza has been bringing that twist to Florida since it opened its first store in 1994 in Tampa and named the company after Florida’s West coast.
As a private-label company, Tumbador Chocolate enjoys certain advantages that chocolate brands do not, CEO Michael Altman says. “There is no question that it opens up many, many doors for us,” he says.
Sequoia Orange Co. does not just bend the rules, it challenges them – and it wins, too. In 1993, it won a 22-year court battle against a federal regulation formally called the Agriculture Marketing Act of 1937, or “prorate” in layman’s terms. Prorate was a government program that limited the amount of oranges and lemons Arizona and California growers could sell in that week’s national market. For instance, if Sequoia possessed 5 percent of the market share and the expected demands for that week were 5 million cases, then Sequoia could only produce 5 percent of the 5 million cases for that week.
Selection and freshness are two of the most important keys to success for a supermarket chain, and that goes double in places like the islands of the Caribbean. Unlike mainland supermarket chains, which have relatively easy access to fresh produce and a wide variety of items, supermarkets like Le Grand Marche on St. Maarten have to work that much harder to keep their shelves stocked and their customers satisfied. According to General Manager Kyle Cummings, it is Le Grand Marche’s ability to do that that has made it the largest supermarket chain on the island.
Beer is not just one drink any more than wine is – as wine is produced in red, white, rose and hundreds of other varietals, so is beer. It is not just the familiar light lager sold at ballparks, but also pale and red ales, porters, stouts, brown and wheat ales, saisons and hundreds more. However, for long periods in the United States, the average person would not have heard of these varieties.
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