Jay Campbell, Hotel & Restaurant Supply

Michael Cinosky, Culinary Depot

Pam Chereskin, Economy Restaurant Equipment & Supply Co.

Tyler Dubbs, Buller Fixture, A Division of Cash-Wa Distributing

Alvin Wang, Action Sales, Irvine, Calif.

Tony Witts, Innovative Foodservice Group/Louis Wohl & Sons

Craig Newton, Supplies on the Fly

Adrian Tuck, Bargreen Ellingson

Lori Foerster, TriMark Hockenbergs

Tom Nash, Amundsen Commercial Kitchens

Jacob Thomases, Myers Restaurant Supply

Bolt “Jen” Bolton, Avanti Restaurant Solutions

Kurt Maschari, BEST Restaurant Equipment & Design Inc., Columbus, Ohio

Vincent Chhim, Rose’s Equipment, Portland, Ore.

Sean Farrugia, Account Executive, Great Lakes Hotel Supply Co., Southfield, Mich.

Dan McDevitt, Account Executive, Restaurant Equipment World, Orlando, Fla.

Jeff Mair, Sr. Outside Sales and Design, Berlin’s Restaurant Supply, North Charleston, S.C.

Lynell Johnson, Dealer Sales Representative, Culinex, Grand Forks, N.D.

Larry Fruchtman worked on the operator side of the foodservice industry for almost three decades, starting in quick-service restaurants as a busser and moving through the ranks up to general manager of a fine-dining restaurant in Atlanta. He then spent more than 11 years as manager of a private country club.

Even though Nick Goldring has been with Culinary Depot for eight years, now serving as the company’s New York sales rep, he still considers himself to be a “junior in the industry.”

Like many college graduates, Lee Rose was not sure where he was headed with his degree in communications from Augusta State University. “I dated a girl who was making smallwares deliveries for an equipment dealership and helped her out,” he recalls.

Working in the restaurant industry from the ground up for more than two decades has served Scott Ellerhorst well in his sales, design and consulting career in C&T Design and Equipment Co.’s Cincinnati office. “I started in high school bussing tables at restaurants, moved up to washing dishes and eventually became a general manager,” he says.

When Jeff Fortier joined his family’s company, Fortier Inc., 18 years ago, the main concern was his unfamiliarity with the products he’d be selling. “I was doing well as sales manager for a sunglasses company out in Virginia, and didn’t know much about the foodservice equipment industry,” he says. “But my uncle Rick said he could teach me, and I knew that learning about a gazillion different products wouldn’t be an obstacle for me.”

In 1998, Melanie Gitlin joined Fayetteville, N.C.-based Thompson & Little as an administrative assistant not knowing what she would become just 12 years later.

Nick Pope had visions of becoming a chef while attending culinary school and working at an equipment dealership part time. He realized being a chef wasn't for him when he took a 12-hour class that ended at 2 a.m. "It put me over the edge," he recalls.

It wasn't until Jim Bologna took a cooking class while working toward a degree in hotel hospitality at Michigan State University that he realized his calling. He went on to earn his Associate's Degree in Culinary Arts, and worked as a chef for more than 20 years.

Maribeth Angelo did not expect her summer job at Hotel and Restaurant Supply would be the start of a successful career. She credits her father, Bill Wolfe, who serves as the company's executive vice president, for both the suggestion of the summer job and the post-college suggestion of accepting a counter sales position there.