“Wozniak’s insistence on providing more expansion slots spurred third parties to embrace the platform and work together creating the ecosystem as partners. The FEDA Data Portal is utilizing this same methodology which will spur innovative solutions by enabling collaboration with industry partners.”
— Brad Pierce President
Restaurant Equipment World
contributions have made him an inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and given him intimate insight into how technology progresses and its impact on businesses. “Mr. Wozniak had a front-row seat to some of the most significant technology disruptions in recent history,” said Jonathan Gustafson, president of Ace Mart Restaurant Supply. “His story and lessons will be valuable as we face new technology disruptors that claim to provide significant impacts on scaling our operations.” Through a guided conversation on the main stage, Gustafson will connect Wozniak’s understanding of the path of innovation to his observations on today’s technology disruptions, including the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a business resource. At a moment when business leaders are under pressure to adapt to new but unproven technologies, Wozniak’s career offers a practical lens for understanding how turning points can translate into actionable strategies. “Leaders must embrace change and sometimes that means adopting a founder’s mindset and challenging the current state of our businesses so that we can evolve for the future,” Gustafson said. “Mr. Wozniak’s experiences should serve as inspiration for distribution leaders as we confront the challenges we are facing.”
Solving the Problem Before It’s Known At first glance, the computer industry of the 1970s
that Wozniak, his partner Steve Jobs, and early Apple employees were trying to break into has little in common with foodservice equipment and supplies. For one, the computer industry itself was still a relatively new concept at the time. Microprocessors that shrank computers from the size of a room to a device that could sit on a desk were only a few years old when Wozniak was designing the first Apple products.
12 FEDA News & Views
By contrast, the foodservice equipment and supplies industry was already well-established by the mid-1970s. FEDA itself had been around for 43 years by the time Apple was founded in 1976, and several member companies are even older than that. But while the industries were in different stages of maturity, many distributors can still see themselves in Apple’s story. Wozniak and Jobs started Apple in Jobs’ childhood home in Los Altos, California, and many distribution leaders — or their parents — have similar stories of warehousing equipment in their basements and working out balance sheets over the dinner table before they were able to move the business into its own space.
The common denominator between Apple and the distribution companies that have endured over the years is their focus on customers and their passion for solving problems, according to Brad Pierce, president of Restaurant Equipment World. “You look back at the early days and we were a bunch of mom-and-pops with scrappy companies,” said Pierce, a technology aficionado whose foodservice solutions are frequently powered by Apple products. “Apple started in the same situation; it was a few guys working out of a family home who were consumed with their business. When Steve [Wozniak] started out, he engineered a good, reliable computer. He believed in his product and he believed in the company that Apple was building. Everybody in the foodservice equipment and supplies industry has lived that to some degree.” Distributors are more sophisticated and nimble
today. Modern technology powers e-commerce and communication tools that enable them to sell across the country. Competitors are no longer just down the street, but on every street in every market — and each one is offering a new service or product that is designed to capture more operators. Staying relevant in today’s
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