FEDA NEWS & VIEWS
THE CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE
Te Place to Get Business Done
As FEDA marks its 90th anniversary, the FEDA Annual Conference remains the best time for executives to network and solve problems.
Having grown up in a family- owned distributor, I attended the FEDA Annual Conference many times as a child, but it wasn’t until 1994 that I got to experience it as a professional. My father decided that year to stop going himself and
to send his 28-year-old son instead, part of his effort to prepare me for leadership. Before I headed down to the PGA National Resort in Florida, he armed me with an important piece of advice: “Shake peoples’ hands. Look them in the eye. Talk to people. No one is better than you, but you can listen and learn.” Maybe he should have reminded me to fine-tune my golf swing too. Once I got down there, I played a round with Henry Coletti, then president of Vulcan, and Mike McNeel, who was with ITW then but is now preparing to retire as IFED president. As we walked up to the first tee, I took a big practice swing to warm up — and promptly sprayed mud all over the unfortunate golf course starter. Coletti turned to McNeel and said, “You’re playing with the kid.” Not the best impression, but dad’s lesson helped
solve problems on the spot without one party needing to go back for permission from two other superiors first. Although the quality of executive-level networking
“FEDA’s willingness to transform is why the
association will celebrate its 90th anniversary at this year’s conference.”
me recover and, in the 29 years since, I’ve come to see the FEDA Annual Conference as the best time to forge relationships with our industry partners. Where other industry events skew more toward showing off equipment and meeting with as many contacts as possible, the FEDA Annual Conference is a place where business gets done. The smaller scale of the conference lends itself better to one-on-one discourse and impromptu meetings. Attendees are all leaders at their companies, meaning we are all talking directly with fellow decision makers who can
has remained unchanged during my time in the industry, the FEDA Annual Conference is evolving toward a better version of itself. For a long time, the conference felt stagnant, often offering the same speakers and the same locations from year to year. But CEO Tracy Mulqueen has done a great job of modernizing the event and creating a lineup of speakers and programs that responds to what’s most important in our industry and prepares us for the future. We now have more meat on the bone and more vital content than ever before. FEDA’s willingness to transform is why the association will celebrate its 90th anniversary at this year’s conference. That longevity is a testament to the strength of our association and our ability to stand symbiotically with the other parts of our industry through times of change. This is a field filled with family businesses and leaders who inherited generational knowledge from those who came before. Going back 90 years there were no large restaurant chains and a supermarket was not a supermarket. Customers had to go to different businesses – a butcher, deli, bakery – to do the same shopping they now finish in one location. It’s incredible how dealers have expanded their services and values over the decades to remain just as relevant to today’s foodservice operators as they were in 1933. Our association has been an indispensable advocate throughout all those shifts, and there is no better time to celebrate FEDA — and ourselves — than at the annual conference this October.
Dave Stafford is the president and CEO of Stafford- Smith and chairman of FEDA’s Board of Directors.
4 FEDA News & Views
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