6 minute read
Hitting the Mark
Serving America's Restaurants
TRIMARK USA
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When you go out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse or go through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A, your meal is touched, prepared or served in products from a company with strong ties to Albany.
TriMark USA has two warehouse locations and an office in Albany that provides essential supplies to restaurants all over the country, including those owned by Bloomin’
Brands (which includes Outback Steakhouse) and Chickfil-A.
“We’re a kitchen equipment and supplies company,” said Mike Haney, TriMark’s vice president of warehouse operations. “We provide everything from disposables, like paper towels, and chemicals and things that a restaurant might use, to cutlery, dishware, all those kinds of things, up to commercial kitchen equipment. We also provide design services, installation, construction services, project management. Pretty much end-to-end what a restaurant might need to design, select, build, install and operate — we can pretty much handle any part of that.”
Haney oversees 10 warehouses in TriMark’s Southern region, including the two in Albany. He said Albany is an important part of TriMark’s operations, so much so that they moved even more operations to Albany.
“Albany is a really great location for us, stemming from days before it was owned by TriMark, until now,” said Haney. “It’s a real growth opportunity for us partly because of our customers but partly because of the transportation infrastructure there, the workforce, the experience that’s on the market."
“They handle probably at least half of two of our biggest customer accounts in addition to a whole array of other smaller accounts and smaller, individual, one-off jobs,” he said. “They’re handling new store openings for two of our biggest customers. In the last year, we moved one of those from another part of the country and moved 50 percent of one of our biggest customer accounts to Albany. We got an additional building there, that’s the Clark Avenue facility to support that. It’s really created growth opportunity in that operation for us.”
“Albanians may not be familiar with the scope of work that we are doing to serve some very large national accounts,” said Albany-based Amanda Murphy, TriMark’s director of national accounts. “I would say the Albany office makes up the Southern region, and we own a large segment of the national chain accounts. Many, many brands that most of us (eat at) on a weekly basis, TriMark is likely involved in some way with converting those buildings into restaurants and serving all of us that are consumers.”
Between the two distribution centers and the corporate office, there are 117 TriMark employees in Albany. Per Haney, it’s the team in Albany that prompted the company to expand in Albany.
“We’ve got a great team,” he said. “We’ve got a great base to build from. There ae several Marine veterans in that operation that I believe have had some local connection there, so there’s a strong logistics workforce there to pull from. … There’s a lot of experience there with the Marine base, so we had a lot of success there with a high quality, available workforce.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues affected nearly every business, Haney said that the hospitality industry and TriMark have still been able to grow.
“I think, obviously, COVID had a pretty substantial impact on us,” he said. “Fortunately, a lot of the customers we serve are some of the businesses that fared better – quick serve, counter serve, fast food – a lot of our customers that fit in those are the ones that were less impacted, and some of them grew during that period. It’s shocking to see.
“We have a number of major chains
that even if they were growing steadily or they maintained themselves during the last couple of years, they’re poised for explosive growth. We see a lot of future opportunity, and we’re probably at our highest position of inventory that we’ve ever been in right now. … We expect that a lot of our chain customers, our restaurant chains, are looking ahead and seeing [that] it’s time to get back out there and really chase that growth.”
Murphy agreed that TriMark is continuing to grow despite the challenges presented by the pandemic.
“We’re seeing aggressive development schedules from a lot of our customer base and a lot of our relationships and that includes legacy and emerging chains,” said Murphy. “We’re having the same challenges and those same roadblocks with inflation, but it really hasn’t slowed the food service industry. As consumers, we’re still eating out.
“I think one of the biggest things to note is the shift in how we’re consuming and how we’re dining. A lot of it has gone to innovation and technology and this off-site premise dining. Especially in the heart of the pandemic, when we did have to retreat [to] home, what sustained a lot of our customer base was the fact that they could pioneer this off-premise dining. That’s true to what has accelerated their development schedule now going into 2023,” she said. “Again, we are seeing aggressive pipelines, and these are (a combination of) new builds and remodels. We’re seeing emerging brands wanting to get the real estate, wanting to get those buildings turned into restaurants and get customers back into those buildings. Then serving them with an off-premise dining (like) Uber Eats, DoorDash and their own independent delivery systems as well.”
With continued and expected growth, Haney and Murphy see a future for that growth in Albany.
“We are continually growing, and we’re growing in the Albany market,” said Murphy. “We are growing a lot of teams around this chain development. We want to do that and within the landscape of Albany, Georgia. We definitely can. There’s sustainability [in Albany].”
“We are creating opportunities there; we’re not just looking to major metro areas,” said Haney. “We’ve proven that there’s talent [in Albany], there’s opportunity to grow.”
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