The Ever-Changing Landscape of Commercial Kitchen Equipment

If you work in the industry, you know that manufacturers are buying each other up as rapidly as ever. Depending on who you ask this can be a good thing or simply one more thing that drives them nuts about commercial kitchen equipment.

A technician would argue that there are way too many manufacturers out there in the first place. Imagine having to be the expert on over 150 different lines of equipment. it's not like an automobile technician that has to be knowledgeable on maybe 10-15 lines of vehicles. That would be easy. The problem with consolidation lies not with the fact that there is consolidation, but that, more often than not, the purchasing manufacturer or entity does not dissolve the line into their current business model.

The outcome of this is that the buyer of the line attempts to incorporate customer service and support of the old line with their current line, or with another line that they own. Yes, it's confusing, but what it boils down to is losing years of support knowledge for some lines of equipment. Now, imagine trying to fix a convection oven from a manufacturer whose technical support staff has been dissolved. The new support staff is then tasked with the responsibility of rifling through the manuals of the recently acquired manufacturer to try to find the right information. All the while, a servicer has to bill the end user or owner of the piece of equipment trying to be fixed.

Nightmare!

Now there are some that do it better than others and allow the manufacturer that was purchased to operate as they were, keeping the staff structure in place and simply incorporating the manufacturer into a larger consortium of manufacturers. Although this is better, this does not result in the reduction of manufacturers in the industry.

Besides that, it seems that new manufacturers enter the marketplace as quickly as others close their doors. This adds increased pressure in the industry as the support groups, such as dealers, servicers, manufacurer rep firms, food service consultants and others scramble to educate themselves on the new lines. So what's a foodservice equipment industry employee to do?

I would think most would be happier with fewer lines. This would result in better stocking inventories of parts from the service agents as they could reduce the amount of lines that require support. Dealers would be able to better educate themselves on the specifications of the equipment they sell and foodservice consultants would be under less pressure to add every line under the sun into their portfolio of accepted alternatives. Perhaps there would be fewer rep firms, but many times they consolidate and maintain staffing levels. In all, the industry would be less stressed.

Will this ever happen? History tells us no. Many times a line is sold and then, a few years later, the previous owner of that line gets back in with a new competitive unit. For as many ITWs and Middlebys and Manitowocs as there are, there are also the Equipexs and Electroluxs and Meikos and Imperials and Tri Stars and Turbo Airs ready to fill the void.

Not sure what the answer is, but if there was a way to begin reducing the amount of commercial equipment lines out there, I'd be all for it. The short-term pain would be worth the long-term benefits. Gotta love capitalism!

Please leave your comments. I'd love to hear your say.