We recently sat down with Jeff Winter of CMA Restaurant Supply & Design to learn about his amazing organization and why he chooses to work with Arctic Industries. A slightly edited transcript of the conversation can be found below.
To kick things off, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and CMA Restaurant Supply & Design?
“We are a design-build firm founded that was founded in 1988, and are located in Kirkland, Washington. The founder, Clifton Macbeth, has his Master’s in Architecture from Cal-Poly so the company has always had an architectural-design emphasis. I have a degree in Interior Design from Purdue University, so I also have a great understanding of form and function. This has always worked well for us when working with architectural and interior design firms as we’re not just trying to jam a bunch of sinks and stoves into the space to drive up the equipment contract. When we send a design to a client for approval, it’s on the CMA title block, which means we’ve had a discussion with the client, designed the project and drawn it. We’re a small firm with only 3 employees on the payroll, our long-standing relationships with several, stainless shops, refrigeration contractors, plumbers, electricians, etc. allow us to do the number of projects that we do.”
There is so much going on in the industry with challenges never faced yet tremendous opportunities. What is your key to success with so much dynamic fluctuation in price, supply, etc.?
“Communication is what got us through the nightmare of the last two years. We never shut our doors, we deemed ourselves an essential business because we supply refrigeration and cooking equipment to the restaurant industry. My phone rings, I pick it up. I receive an email, I answer it. Funny enough, those two simple things seem to be somewhat of a dying art right now. We believe in under promising and over delivering in everything we do, meaning you give a deadline and I’m there. Our business model is design-build. We don’t do bid work, government work, tax-payer funded work, no military, etc. We sit across the table from the end-user and help their dream come to fruition. We’ve had some of the same clients from day one, meaning we’re on the second and third generation of some of these families that we’re working with. It’s a testament to how we like to do business and a key to our success.”
How did COVID affect your team? What are your thoughts on the recovery of the market?
I would say that we became stronger. Nobody at CMA got laid off. We made it through the best we could, adjusting to the seemingly daily twists and turns. It’s worth mentioning that the Pacific Northwest has so many hi-tech companies like Microsoft and Facebook and many of their employees never took a hit to their wallet, and with the bonus of not having to commute to work or eating out every day, their disposable income increased, so they were ordering delivery meal frequently. Quite a few of our clients saw their business volume go up, along with profit margins. To emphasize an earlier point, because we were picking up the phones; we were earning a lot of the business that our competition dropped the ball on. This has continued to be the case as we are constantly picking up new project opportunities, although a little slower than 2021, but we’re ahead of where we anticipated.”
How did your relationship with Arctic come about?
“During the foam crisis of 2020, we got a phone call from Jayme Verfaillie of Roller Associates, our local Arctic factory representative, stating that, “We’ve got foam!” We had been struggling for months with our long-time supplier to get the finished product delivered in a timely manner. Since then, we’ve done at least a dozen projects with Arctic. It’s been a great relationship so far, yesterday morning I sent a drawing to Bruce Podgur, our Regional Sales Manager and I had a quote back in 3-4 hours. That is the type of service that gets a factory chosen as a channel partner, and once part of the team, we tend to stick with them.”
How did CMA get its impressive ranking of #97 on all published lists of Food Service Equipment distribution giants in the country?
“Not to sound like a broken record, but it’s because when the phone rings or an email comes in, we answer them. When someone needs to buy something, they call us. We didn’t change our business model during the shutdowns. We stuck with our principles; we kept answering the phones, doing drawings, going out to jobsites, and taking care of people. Contractors appreciated that because they knew that we were taking care of their clients. Architects sent us business as well because they knew we were open. Truthfully, we’ve got more business than we can handle, which is always a good thing. That’s what made 2020 a very good year and 2021 a great year for us.”
What excites you about the future of working with Arctic?
“We’re excited to have such a strong partner. Walk-in coolers aren’t exactly exhilarating, there’s no getting around it. Working with Arctic makes our lives easier, which is great because life currently has so many daily challenges. We’re able to focus on other challenges because Arctic has their scope under control. This allows us to focus on other issues at hand.”
If you sum up CMA in one statement, what would you say?
“Our level of care is hard to beat. If anything, we tend to care a little too much because we work with the end user who usually is the one who has the vision for everything and is not only financially invested in the product, but also emotionally invested in it as well. Our level of care starts from the very beginning, always making sure we keep things on schedule so their projects are not having delays due to our scope of work. We’re also all about teamwork. We’ve worked with a lot of the same subcontractors, general contractors, and architects since day one, so there is a good level of continuity in our projects. That’s what the heart of CMA is all about.”
Thanks for taking the time to sit down and chat with us, Jeff!
