Along his path to becoming the president and CEO of Oswalt Restaurant Supply in Oklahoma City, Huff Harper learned quite a few lessons and continues to put them to good use.

Huff HarperPerhaps the greatest moral he was taught was at a young age by a man with a wealth of aeronautical knowledge who enjoyed a fine cigar. “Before I joined Oswalt, I worked for a somewhat smaller company,” Harper says. “The owner had actually worked for NASA and Boeing. He had started this business, and I went to work for him.

“I was just out of high school and working on a manufacturing line. One day, I’m working on this unit and I’m assembling these parts. He walks out and he’s standing behind me, smoking this cigar. I looked behind me and he said good morning, and I said good morning to him. 

“I go back to work, and he’s still standing behind me. I said, ‘Hey, am I doing something wrong?’ He said, ‘Sport, you ain’t doing a damn thing wrong. But if you do, I’m damn sure going to tell you.’ He told me that I should always work as if he were standing behind me and that I should always do the right thing and assume that everybody’s going to know what we did. He was a
good guy.”

Since becoming the president and CEO of Oswalt Restaurant Supply four years ago, Harper — who has spent more than 30 years in the foodservice industry — has taken that valuable lesson and mixed it into his current managerial style. “I tend to try to help others become better,” he says. “A lot of times, I’ll try to give thoughts or suggestions I may have, and then let those around me use their own skill set or leadership abilities to take charge and run with it. I’m always there to answer questions or provide feedback to help them achieve where we’re trying to go and to get
over any constraints they run into.”

That said, Harper also knows when it’s time for a leader to step in and take action. “You have to be careful about stepping back too much,” he says. “You have to know when it’s time to stand up and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this situation, and here’s what we’re going to do about it.’ You can’t be indecisive; you have to be decisive.”

Developing Others

Harper’s approach to developing talent tends to be very personal and comes naturally to him. “I’ve always tried to have a one-on-one connection with our people. I am always looking for experiences or knowledge I can share,” he says. “I’ve always been big on others being successful and finding ways to help them achieve that success, both personally and professionally. And when they are successful, our company is successful.”

Celebrating the success of your team is also important. In fact, several of Oswalt’s sales members have earned recognition as FE&S DSR of the Month over the years. “I hear a lot of times that you’re going to put your No. 1 salesperson out there for everyone to target and go and steal them,” Harper says. “But you just have to have trust and faith. You can’t put yourself first. You have to put them out there.”

And for Harper, it all comes back to those one-on-one relationships he has with the Oswalt crew. “The point is, we’re not scared,” he says. “I’m not scared to say this person is very successful and they deserve recognition for it. I’m just really big on that. I want them to be successful.” 

Harper believes celebrating the achievements of the team as well as the individuals that comprise it plays an integral role in sustaining the success of Oswalt Restaurant Supply. “We have a great team. We worked really hard on our internal methods of customer acquisition and retention,” he says. “And we’ve worked on strengthening our partner relations.”

Of course, this kind of trusting culture does not come about overnight. It takes time to develop and nurture. “Historically, we’ve been slow to go with the next man up,” Harper recalls. “What we found, though, is by having a more trusting culture, we were able to grow by putting our associates in positions where they could be successful and they could then help train the newcomers to the industry. I attribute a lot of our growth to some of the internal methods that we’ve changed to be more efficient but mostly to the structure that we use.”

Harper is also an ardent believer that one of the ways his employees can achieve greater success is by attending industry conferences that provide opportunities for personal development. In the past, these conferences afforded Harper the opportunity for some self-reflection. “Maybe a year ago, we were reviewing our core focus, and I kept thinking, ‘Why do I like it so much? What is it about the industry that I like?’ Then I started thinking about one of our core focus statements in particular: equipping those who feed others,” he says. “In one of our company meetings, I went and said, ‘What do we do here?’ At first, it took a little bit for people to respond, and they eventually said, ‘We sell ovens, and we sell refrigerators.’ But once the discussion really got going, they were able to grasp the bigger picture of what we’re doing: helping feed others.”

That mission starts on a grassroots level and grows from there. “A lot of our business is K-12, so basically, we’re helping others feed children, and that kind of brought some more meaning to it,” Harper says. “It took me probably 10 years of being in the industry to finally start getting passionate about what the industry does.”

That passion for the industry has allowed Harper not only to help others but also to attract new employees to his company, even those who have no prior foodservice experience. “We’re really big on bringing new people into the industry, so a lot of our newer employees and teammates have come from outside the industry,” he says.

Harper’s team-first mentality applies to more than his internal crew. “Whether it’s an architect or a restaurateur or the business that has feeding on-site, it takes all of us to get that food to land on the plate for the customer,” he says. “We try to stay focused on the industry and educate those who come on board that what we’re trying to do is not about selling an oven. Anybody can sell an oven.”

Harper’s focus on the industry includes understanding different technology tools, notably artificial intelligence. “At first, I started hearing people say that they probably won’t implement AI or will give it four of five years to evolve,” he says. “But the growth has been exponential. If people thought the rise of the internet was fast, AI is moving so much faster. It’s on your phones, on the tablets and on your computers. We have quite a few people who are using it.” 

Harper still finds the foodservice industry as a whole — and Oswalt Restaurant Supply in particular — provide him with the energy he requires each day to lead. “What I like best is that I go to work every day and that feeling I get when I walk into the business really fuels me. There’s not a lot of friction,” he says. “We have a lot of clarity throughout the organization. When you walk in, people are happy, people are joking — and people are working their butts off.

“A lot of people there work hard to make it a great environment for the whole team. If somebody has something going on, I want to be able go and hopefully be some type of mentor and try to help them get through whatever challenge they’re battling. I enjoy those one-on-one discussions as well as just walking into a place it feels good to walk into.”

What is a lesson learned you have never forgotten?

To be a leader, you have to lead by example, and if you work hard, then the team around you will work hard. I try not to ask anyone to do something that I either haven’t done myself or wouldn’t do myself.

What would your team say is your superpower? 

Being able to look at something and figure out how to fix it. I can look at a problem or I can look at a process, and for some reason, I can see things. Instead of looking at the effect, I can find the cause.

Where or whom do you turn to for inspiration?

My family. I have my wife and three kids and now a grandbaby, but he’s only six months old, so he’s not helping me a lot yet. But he inspires me to be a better person.