Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/964617
24 FEDA News & Views Chefs' Toys' President Steve Dickler will tell you that the jump his company made from the 95th largest dealer in the country to 24th is not rocket science. Unassumingly laid back and genuinely a nice guy, as characterized by others in the industry, Dickler attributes the feat to nothing more than common sense. at's just the way he sees the big picture, as an exercise in taking the time to sift through the pluses and minuses and then execute based on the obvious calculations. Others, however, have taken notice—as noted by the nod the trained chef received when he was selected as Foodservice Equipment & Supplies magazine's 2016 Top Achiever Dealer. "Considering that their growth was not technology-related, their evolution as a company has taken place in a relatively short period of time," says Equipex's President Gary Licht. Short as in skyrocketing from $19 million in sales to $86 million in a mere six years. "When they opened the Fountain Valley store, they took a big risk and it was almost instantaneously successful," says Licht. " ey took a piercingly- focused concept and grew an incipient knife-sharpening business into a small showroom and evolved it into bigger showrooms. So those of us on the outside looking in were thinking, 'Here's a company that knows what they're doing and has an identifi able market focus for their supplier partners to follow. ere is a formula behind everything they're doing. ey know who they are and who they want to be." Interestingly enough, when Dickler's partner, Mike Krepistman, is asked about Chefs' Toys' success, the fi rst thing he mentions is not their well-publicized strategy to supersize their Southern California showrooms and fi ll them with as much equipment as possible. Nor, does he start with the location of their dealerships, which are always parked across the street from, or near, Restaurant Depot. Although, the move has worked as planned to peel off sales from the 400 to 600 hundred customers that the big-box retailer attracts every day. "We're not trying to compete with them," says Krepistman, as an aside. " ey do a fantastic job marketing so it just seems logical that that's the place to be, and if they sell things that we can't make any money on, then we switch to a diff erent brand. We don't all have to have News & Views asked E&S manufacturers which small to midsized dealers excel in cash-and-carry and this niche player was on everyone's radar. By Stacy Ward, Editor in Chief stacy@feda.com the same cutting boards or the same fry pans, and if that's the price, that's the price. My job is not to show the customer why I should charge more; my job is to show the customer that it's the same price here, but we off er more services. I don't want to be the cheapest and I don't want to be the most expensive. I just want to have a good price and good service." is is what often gets overshadowed— the shrewd business sense that's facilitated the dealership's growth. Aside from the intense focus on making their customers' lives easier, buying right is one of the fi rst things that Krepistman points to when explaining the rise from 95 to 24. "One of the biggest things that has helped us is that Steve enforced the practice that we quote what we have," he says. "We don't go to market by reacting to the other guy's quotes. When Steve pushed that button, it really lifted us—not that we were stumbling but it elevated us another notch. A great deal of succeeding in this business is about how you buy." And it's also about partnership, adds Dickler. "You have to have your buying group, you have to have buying power, you have to have everything to compete right now," he says. "We make a lot of phone calls to make sure that we can be competitive, and we demonstrate to our local rep that if our local customer buys their product from somewhere outside of our local area, we both lose. And I've seen changes in recent months to suggest that message is getting across. ere are more MAP policies and distribution policies aimed at taking a few steps back and bringing more business to local dealers."