Albany is the heart of Trimark Strategic

ALBANY — For more than 50 years Albany has been home to one of the restaurant supply industry’s leading companies. Although Trimark Strategic is going through some important changes internally, the business that was founded by Gaines and Lura Medley as Medley Hotel Restaurant Supply Co. in downtown Albany is still firmly committed to the Southwest Georgia community that has nurtured its growth since 1963.

“Our heart and soul is in Albany, Georgia,” Trimark Strategic General Manager Reed Jackson, who is retiring at the end of this year, said. “We are a part of this community and we have been for many, many years. We are South Georgia.”

Through various acquisitions and changes in the restaurant supply industry, the company the Medleys founded is part of a larger conglomerate of companies under the Trimark banner, but it is still, in the many ways the South Georgia business that grew to handle the restaurant supply needs of numerous large and small clients, including local Albany area favorites and national chains like Zaxby’s, Outback Steakhouse and Chick-fil-A.

Jackson said the company’s expansion over the years was made possible by the business acumen of the company’s founders, as well as their dedication to customer service and relationship building, two important things that have continued through the years, even as subsequent leadership teams have stepped to the fore.

Once such leader, whom Jackson said is responsible for a great deal of the company’s successes was the Medley’s son-in-law and Jackson’s brother-in-law and dear friend David Campbell, who joined the company in 1968 and helped guide its success for the next 35 years.

“Mr. Medley was a great relationship person and his handshake was his word, and that’s the way he conducted business,” said Jackson. “David was the same way. He was just a great leader and had a great energy that really helped us get traction and grow our business.”

Jackson explained that over the years Medley and later its various incarnations were able to create a niche in the food service industry that began locally by providing area restaurants, governments, institutions, and civic and social organizations what they needed to run a commercial kitchen. The company provided everything from pots and pans, to industrial cook tops, refrigeration units, silverware and more, always with a keen focus on customer service and innovation.

Over time, and with Campbell’s visionary leadership, Jackson said, the company continued to grow locally and regionally before expanding nationally, which has been an important driver in the company’s continued successes.

“When David joined the company, we got our first national chain account, and this was back before restaurants had this big growth in concept chains in the restaurant business,” said Jackson. “I kind of refer to that because in today’s world the multi-unit chain account is what drives the food service industry.”

GROWTH & INNOVATION

Over time the company established relationships with large corporations such as Days Inn, S&S Cafeterias, Davis Brothers Hotels and Cafeterias, and Western Sizzlin’ before ultimately forging important bonds with Bloomin’ Brands Inc., which owns Outback Steakhouse, Carraba’s Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and more, and with Chick-fil-A. That relationship, Jackson said, is unparalleled in the food service industry.

Through the Chik-fil-A relationship, Trimark Strategic established a model through which the company could alleviate issues the chain was facing when outfitting its new locations, by handling the distribution and warehousing component of that process, which has now become the consolidation and distribution service Trimark Strategic provides for multiple entities.

Jackson said that with the company’s consolidation and distribution service, and its installation team, whenever a customer is ready to open a restaurant, “we’ll put it on as many trucks as we need to and we’ll show up one day when they tell us to, and we’ll take our team and we’ll get that equipment set up in that restaurant in less than a week.”

Additionally, Trimark Strategic has also grown the Chick-fil-A relationship to the point where the restaurant supply company handles all of the chain’s supply needs, including monitoring all of its restaurant equipment and supplies, and making sure those assets are maintained or upgraded when necessary.

Today, Trimark Strategic operates a special Chick-fil-A division comprising more than 20 people who are solely dedicated to managing all of the restaurant’s equipment needs — including maintaining an inventory of everything the company has and working directly with Chick-fil-A operators to determine whether a piece of equipment needs to be repaired or replaced.

Jackson estimates that in the first year that arrangement brought Chick-fil-A’s equipment purchases down some 25 percent.

“We were making the call to repair this stuff rather than replace it,” said Jackson. “The other thing we did was, we had a network of service agencies in all these cities where the Chick-Fil-As were. We knew who to call, we knew what to say to them and we would charge them to go to the store, make an evaluation and we would also know if that piece of equipment was under warranty.

“We were doing asset tracking for them to understand how old the equipment was, and whether it was under warranty or not. So it helps them considerably.”

And as beneficial as that arrangement has been to Chick-fil-A, it’s been equally beneficial to Trimark Strategic, which views the relationship as a particular point of pride.

“It’s a true partnership,” said Trimark Strategic’s Vice President of National Accounts Chick-fil-A Mitch Welch, who has helped manage that program since its inception in 2003. “We see ourselves as more of an extension of Chick-fil-A than as somebody who works for Chick-fil-A.”

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Through that that type of expansion of large relationships like Bloomin’ Brands and Chick-fil-A, Trimark Strategic has grown into an industry leader. Jackson and other leaders at the company, however, are quick to point out that the company has also worked hard to develop and maintain the relationships it has with local customers in Albany and the rest of Southwest Georgia and northern Florida.

“The core of our business, and the heart and soul of our business, were the school systems in Southwest Georgia, and the restaurants, and anybody that had a commercial food service business,” Jackson said. “We still have a strong focus with our local clientele, with our local customers. We were very fortunate to have so many friends, which is what they are to us. This is what we do everyday.

“We may have grown up a little bit, but at the end of the day we wake and count our blessings right here in Southwest Georgia.”

To illustrate that point, Jackson shared that recently Trimark Strategic is either currently working on or has recently completed numerous projects in southern Georgia and northern Florida totaling over $6.6 million dollars.

Additionally, the company’s Albany location is once again ground zero for what the company hopes will be even greater expansion in the future, something Jackson and other company leaders say will have important impact locally.

Trimark’s Albany facilities, which include its offices and showroom at 1747 Oak Haven Drive in the Pecan Grove Industrial Park, and a 155,000-square-foot distribution center the company leases on Industry Avenue, will soon serve as the main distribution hub for the entire Southeastern United States.

“South Georgia has been central to the company’s success,” Jackson said. “And as we go forward, the role that we’re going to be playing is, Albany has become the hub of Trimark Strategic’s businesses.

“From a distribution standpoint and a sales standpoint, we’ll service Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta and Tampa. And the distribution center we have out here is going to continue to be kind of the hub which supports all those extensions.”

Jon Jacobs, who has been with the company for the past two years in its Norcross office and will be assuming the role as Trimark Strategic Vice President and General Manager of Georgia, said the change in structure is key to the company’s future growth.

“We’re going to create more of a centralized distribution center,” said Jacobs. “In other words (we will) utilize Albany for more than what it is right now. No longer will we be siloed in either Atlanta or Albany or Tampa or Knoxville or Nashville. We’re going to create route distribution (and) supply and transfer best practices across all branches. And that’s going to begin with Georgia.

“The combination of talent and leadership in Norcross and Albany will begin the process of creating the standardization and best practices that will take us to the next level.”

Jacobs said that with that change Albany’s role in the company’s distribution network will expand and that there will be a substantial shift in how the location supports the rest of Trimark Strategic’s business.

“The two warehouses (Albany and Norcross) are going to have to work together,” explained Jacobs. “We’ll bring larger projects in here, containers and that kind of stuff, transfer up to the Atlanta office and from the Atlanta office over to Knoxville and to Nashville.

“And (the two warehouses won’t have) all of the same products. You’ll end up with bigger, high dollar (equipment) going through this location, smaller items and China and stuff going through the Atlanta location.”

VITAL LOCATION

Additionally, the Albany location will continue to be vital to the company’s sales and service operations, and Jacobs said he’d like to see that even further expanded in the future.

“We’ve got a sales route system here, and we’ve got a national account sales team here,” said Jacobs. “We’ve got the same thing up in Atlanta, but again there’s talent and experience on both teams that we can cross-train back and forth.

”And again the location of the Albany office means that we can get to Tallahassee and the coast and that kind of stuff, which we hadn’t been taking advantage of. We’ve got a sales team there, but we’re not supporting it as strongly as we need to. And we’ll get there. And then branch out into other new areas.”

One of the ways in which Jacobs would like see the company grow is to expand the relationships Trimark Strategic has with its customers, in much the way it has with Chick-fil-A.

One of the people who will help spearhead those efforts is Amanda Scott, the company’s new regional director of distribution and operations for Georgia.

Scott has assumed leadership of the Albany location following the November retirement of long-time Trimark Strategic Director of Operations Ronda Bailey, after having spent 11 years with the company helping to manage the Chick-fil-A relationship.

“When I came on with Chik-fil-A we were barely doing $15 million, and when I left as the account manager to take this new role, which I did this year … we were at over $100 million,” Scott said. “With this new role I’m coming out of what had been all things Chick-fil-A — and growing that part of the business here in Albany — to taking on a larger role to help us continue to grow all the other aspects of the business here in Georgia, but also to continue to nurture that particular account as well.”

Not only do Scott and Jacobs want to continue nurturing the Chick-fil-A relationship, they want to use that relationship as a model for what they can offer to other restaurants and restaurant concepts.

“I think with our other customers, … the meaningful relationship piece is so huge for us with them,” Scott said. “But I think also our ability to show (clients) how we can add value to their business, how we can help them create and innovate as companies, to help propel them forward, and ways that we can provide stability through services so that they can focus on the thing that they need to focus on most, which is their customer base.

“When we take those things out of the mix for them, we’re allowing them to do so much more with their resources, with them having the ability to lean on and trust us.”

HONORING A LEGACY

Even with their potential for growth, however, Trimark Strategic’s leadership team is committed to maintaining the company’s South Georgia roots, and continuing to grow and develop its talent in the same way the Bailey, Jackson, Campbell and the Medley’s before them, have done over the years.

“I’ve had the great pleasure and benefit to have been kind of raised up through Reed Jackson, Rhonda Bailey and also David Campbell’s tutelage during my time,” Scott said. “My role in particular as the regional director of distribution and operations for Georgia, is to basically help support the people in this building and also in our distribution center in all aspects of what they do every day to serve the community.

“That means our sales staff. That means our purchasing staff, our installation crews that are out on the road all the time, accounting, our contracts, which do a lot of the business for local schools and government organizations, and also local mom-and-pop restaurants. So, I’m here to support all of those groups.

“It’s important because I feel like Jon and I are basically becoming the caretakers of the legacy here.”

“It’s a family business; it’s a family environment,” Jacobs added. “That’s what we want to continue and grow, and to foster and to nurture.”

And although he’s moving on to another phase in his life, Jackson said he too views the customers and employees in South Georgia like family and that he can retire from his long career knowing that the company’s future and its connection to its birthplace is firmly set.

“We’re still here,” Jackson said. “As big as we’ve gotten our heart is still here. This is our home.”