We sat down with Arctic’s new reps in MAFSI 16, Dan Quirk and Dave Brinkley to discuss the unique needs of their territory and changes they’ve seen in the commercial cooler and walk-in industry.
Arctic: We are joined by Dan and Dave from Foodtec Distribution. I’d like to start by hearing your individual stories in food service and then collectively how you joined forces at Foodtec.
Dan: I’m a second-generation rep in this industry. I’ve been selling walk-ins my whole career with some good manufacturers and some not as high quality as Artic. My father was a Thermo-Kool rep. He died unexpectedly at an early age of fifty-two and I was twenty-two. I have over 30 years of experience in this, and I’ve been selling and running the business since that time. David, why don’t you fill them in on your background?
Dave: We’ve been together, what, five years now? I started as a dealer 20 years ago. After that, I moved to Missouri and became a rep. I started work for a rep firm and took over the rep firm for about ten years. Many changes happened, and I decided to go into manufacturing. I worked for manufacturers for about eight years and then when COVID hit, I couldn’t travel anymore. Dan, about that time, needed somebody over here in this territory so I am back in the rep end again, which I like, it is nice.
Arctic: That is great, you both have a long history in the industry. I am curious, what are some things you’ve seen change over the years, whether on the manufacturing side or the rep side, or just a brief history and evolution of the industry from your point of view?
Dan: Well, the personal relationships we all grew up with have since gone by the wayside, but it’s still important that we maintain that sense of personalization. Anybody can sell a walk-in. It is how you service it and take care of the customer once problems occur. And that is what defines us and what we do. I think the biggest change I have seen is all these big companies gobbling up all these smaller companies, putting them under one umbrella, and then giving them to one rep group.
Dave: Now they are all going to one group and it’s just a supergroup that can’t possibly do justice to all the lines they have. That is a license for us to sell Arctic in buying groups. We had a great meeting last weekend that went very well because we are in the buying groups right off the bat. The fact we’re in there and we can give them an excellent product and a good price. That makes an enormous difference too.
Arctic: Was there anything that jumped out to you in the initial meetings with Arctic and the onboarding process since then?
Dan: It moved very quickly. We were going to wait until the end of the year to get on board with Arctic, but we decided to forego a bonus to jump on board and it is one of the best decisions we have made. We are working on a couple of projects right now and the whole team is involved all the way from Brian on down. Ben’s been involved and Scott has been an immense help to us. All the support we have received has been outstanding.
Arctic: Tell us a little bit about your territory. What states do you cover and what are some of the nuances that must be considered with the area?
Dan: We call us the flyover territory because everybody is flying from east to west coast and vice versa, right over the middle of the United States. We have Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and southern Illinois as part of our territory. We have a lot of windshield time. It’s three to four hours between every major city in our territory. It is not L. A. where the same rep might put as many miles in as we do, but he never leaves home. He must fight that traffic and thank God that I don’t have to put up with that.
Dave: That is about it, MAFSI region 16. St. Louis and Kansas City are the two big places here. You go out to Omaha, Nebraska, which is West. And then up in Iowa, you have a couple of huge dealers up there too. There are great dealers out there, but not as many used to be, unfortunately, within our markets.
Arctic: Are you noticing anything specific from a product standpoint? What is happening within the walk-in space? Is there anything to mention or highlight?
Dan: We very much like the position we are in right now. As I said earlier, I started in this business as a rep for a competitor and they just fired their old reps, so we are just licking our chops now to be able to go. I still have all my contacts from the old days and that is the first place David, and I are going after. Between dealers and consultants, we have a lot more to offer them so we’re chopping at the bit to get going.
Arctic: How would you describe your current strategy? And is there a five-year plan that you talk about internally?
Dave: We discuss what we are doing all the time, which way we are going, what the trends are. Is it schools or universities? We try to make sure we go after wherever the market is growing so our biggest thing is just trying to stay on top of that. Dan and I will talk about who we should be going after. Has it opened in one area? We are spinning our wheels and, you know, getting on the highways to talk to these particular people. So, consultants this month, because there are a bunch of huge projects going on that we need to get them involved with, or schools because schools are just reopening in our territory.
Arctic: Can you dive into that a little bit more? Are you seeing more requests from the public sector from schools and institutions versus private? Is there a healthy balance this time of year? Does it work seasonally?
Dan: We specialize in school districts, be it K-12 and above. When schools spend money, they must spend it for 20 years. They cannot have something breaking in five to ten years and head back to the school board for more money. The traditional rep would say my walk-in’s better and the next guy in the door would say the same thing. What we do is a little different, we go in and ask them questions about their old walk-ins and produce five questions that they cannot say no to about our walk-ins and what we are selling. And then we take it one step further by showing them how to write performance specs. 95 percent of the problems with walk-ins once they’re in the field is the installation and what a typical dealer who’s bidding on a school project would do is he’ll get a bid from a school district and get he’ll send out three copies of the bid to three manufacturers of walk-ins and then he’ll send out three copies of the bid to three installers. And then what he does is he marries the cheapest manufacturer with the cheapest installer. And that is where all our problems arise. Then, when there is a problem out there, that installer didn’t make any money and they’re not going back out there to fix it. We show the school districts how to write a specification to include installation. Most of these school districts have a refrigeration contractor that does that. So, they say Dan, ‘How do we use our installer with your walk-in?’ And we reply that it’s quite easy to do. We can write it delivered and installed by the manufacturer. We break out the pricing with installation price creating the budget for that school district to send out. That is the whole part of the presentation, are you a school district? Are you a buyer? Are you being sold? We want them to be buyers so that they buy a product that will last 20 or 25 years.
Arctic: That’s a fascinating look behind the scenes. Is there anything you would like to end on or share before we wrap?
Dave: Well, we are impressed. Technically, we have only been on board since the 5th of August, and we got a great jumpstart and momentum.
Dan: We decided to jump when we did so that we could take this last quarter of 2024 and start selling Arctic, so we are off and running when 2025 turns. I have never been associated with a walk-in manufacturer that approaches the industry the way Arctic does.
Arctic: Thank you, gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of your week and have a nice Labor Day weekend.
Interested in a walk-in or working with Arctic? Contact us today.