Striving for Excellence

The Southern’s 99th Annual Meeting was held at the Sawgrass Marriott in beautiful Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. It was another great week of catching up with friends, conducting business, gaining new perspectives, and enjoying a beautiful property. This year for our Meetings with a Mission initiative, we partnered with the K-9’s for Warriors. We are proud to announce that we collected close $4,000 in cash (in addition to a $1,000 check from The Southern). This organization provides highly-trained Service Dogs to military veterans suffering from PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. Thank you to everyone who supported this great cause!

Our Southern Annual Golf Tournament provided a great day for networking with customers and prospects, as well as some friendly competition. This year it was held at the Dye’s Valley Course at the beautiful TPC Sawgrass. Thank you to our sponsor ITG Brands for their continued support of this event and The Southern.

It was standing room only for this year’s education sessions. Leah Brown, Talent Retention Strategist, Crescendo Strategies kicked off our Education Sessions by sharing strategies for keeping employees longer. Next, Shawn Burcham, CEO of PFSbrands and Founder of GRITT Business Coaching, shared best practices, trends, and success stories that he’s seen from his experience in the foodservice industry. Immediately following, Rowdy Gaines shared his inspiring story of perseverance during our General Session.

This year’s Ten-2-Profit was an overwhelming success. With over 650 individual meetings occurring during this event, the room was a-buzz with excitement before, during and after. The House of “Deals” on Friday was a great way to end this very busy week.

None of this would be possible without the continued support of all of our sponsors. We salute them for their commitment to The Southern each and every year. n