goes out of service, Culinary Depot works on the customer’s timeline. If a supplier says replacement parts will take weeks to send out, the company’s service team will instead source them from other distributors, parts companies, or existing units to get kitchens running again as quickly as possible. “We spring into action and cycle through multiple service agents on a single call to find whoever can respond fastest,” Meisels said.
The model requires a trained team
that knows which service companies are manufacturer-authorized and which ones have earned a reputation for delivering on urgency. For example, Culinary Depot invests heavily in training its service staff on specific equipment lines. This helps them troubleshoot problems directly with customers and know exactly who to call for what. But Lichter said the real payoff goes
beyond repeat business and referrals. Because Culinary Depot owns the entire service relationship, the team has developed strong opinions about which brands and models create problems down the line. “Pearl will call me and say, ‘Don’t sell this brand because we have too many service issues with it,’” Lichter said. That feedback loop means the distributor only sells equipment it’s confident will perform, which reduces service calls and strengthens customer relationships. This philosophy also changes how Culinary Depot approaches
18 FEDA News & Views
price-sensitive customers who don’t always factor in the total cost of ownership (TCO) when making purchase decisions. Take a restaurant owner who kept buying inexpensive microwaves instead of investing in a high-speed oven. After a demo and some education on how a high-speed oven takes 30 seconds to cook what a microwave needs three minutes for, the distributor turned a $600 microwave purchase into a $40,000 sale — one $10,000 oven for each of the company’s four locations. Ultimately, Culinary Depot’s one-
stop-shop model creates accountability that improves every part of the business. “We’re accountable for the service, so we always make sure customers get the right piece of equipment upfront,” Lichter said. “We always think about what’s best for the customer at times when neither overselling or underselling works. It’s about maintaining that fine balance.”
Low-Tech Tools Keep
Kitchens Running When a broiler stops working on a busy night, few restaurant managers have the time to dig through filing
cabinets or search their email inboxes for warranty contacts. That’s why Chris Monico, vice president of foodservice design at C&T Design and Equipment Co., in Indianapolis, does something that sounds almost quaint in 2026. He prints out service listings, frames them, and tells managers to hang them in their offices. “It may sound silly, but you print that
service listing out on an 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper, frame it and give it to the managers so they always have it handy,” Monico said. “That way, when something goes down late Friday night, they have everyone’s contact info right at their fingertips.” It’s a small touch in what C&T calls its
“OEM binder program,” but it perfectly captures the distributor’s ethos on post- sale support. The binders themselves have evolved from paper manuals to digital files that live on websites or get emailed to customers, but the core idea remains the same: Give operators everything they need to keep equipment running without having to hunt for answers. Each binder includes equipment manuals for reference and a service
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