Tough Testing for Harsh
Environments Commercial kitchens don’t treat equipment gently. CFS Brands Vice President of Product Design and Development Brian Demers knows this firsthand, and it shapes everything about how the Oklahoma City-based company approaches product validation. “Restaurants are pretty abusive places for products, which take a beating both in the front and back of the house,” he said.
For CFS Brands, whose dinnerware
and food storage products face constant exposure to high-temperature washing environments, that reality drives a continuous testing program that doesn’t stop once an item hits the market. Demers said the manufacturer tests materials regularly, even on products that have been in production for years, to ensure they still perform as expected. The goal? Catch potential problems before customers do. “Our testing is all about preventing
failure out in the field,” Demers said. “We understand those issues cost our customers time, energy and money, and it costs us the same.” One of the biggest recent shifts in
CFS Brands’ testing program involves materials compliance. California’s Prop 65 has long required regular testing and documentation, particularly for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), but newer state-level regulations banning certain materials require companies to stay on top of an increasingly complex landscape. To ensure compliance, Demers
said the manufacturer uses third- party testing to add an independent layer of verification to its internal processes. ISO 9001 certification
“When you’re specifying and selling, you can point to proven standards and processes. That’s selling documented performance instead of just making claims.”
— Andrew Carroll Vice President of Marketing Refrigerated Solutions Group
runs in the background of all of it. In fact, the standard is integrated into factory inspections, materials checks, and quality control at every stage of production. This is important, Demers noted, because ISO signals to distributors and their customers that the processes behind every product meet a documented, audited standard of quality — meaning they don’t just need to take the company’s own word for it.
Built and Tested In-House,
From the Ground Up Back at RSG, the company designs and manufactures its own refrigeration systems in-house. Because it both builds and tests under its own conditions before shipment, Carroll said RSG can refine the product before it reaches customers. Carroll views that as a core competitive advantage, and not just a quality control measure, both for the company and its distributors. It works like this: Every product is put through a structured engineering gating process, where a cross-functional team checks progress against requirements at each stage before moving forward. The company’s ISO 9001 certification backs
all of it up. “ISO ensures that quality isn’t dependent on circumstance or opinion,” Carroll stated. “We have processes, they’re disciplined, and they’re proven. That gives customers and partners confidence.” That confidence is critical in a
sector where costly food inventory is stored around the clock in RSG’s units, and where failure can create food safety risks and revenue losses. For foodservice equipment distributors, Carroll said that reliability around food safety is a conversation worth having with every customer who asks why they should pay more for a better-tested product. He pointed to two recent examples
where RSG’s investment in rigorous testing yielded positive results. One involves A2L refrigerants, which carry lower global warming potential and fall under the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act. These refrigerants behave differently than their predecessors, which led RSG to invest in new leak testing equipment compatible with A2Ls and to build a new testing process specifically for those products. “You can’t afford to learn through field failures with new refrigerant
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