I was re-reading several past Parting Shot articles written by a variety of industry insiders, including dealers, manufacturers, operators, service agents and consultants. Not surprisingly, this feature consistently ranks among our most widely read sections of the magazine. The wisdom and passion that your peers express on the last page of Foodservice Equipment & Supplies often contains the most thought-provoking ideas that we print each month.

Or, customer engagement in an age of virtualization. Sometimes there is just no substitute for meeting with a customer or business partner face to face.

As the foodservice industry evolves, the way professionals within the industry educate themselves will continue to evolve as well. A big part of our editorial mission at FE&S is to continue to play an important role in that evolution. 

Funny thing about anniversaries...their significance often depends on the relative success of whatever person, place, or thing, is being celebrated or remembered. For a failing sports team, for instance, crossing the century mark might go by as uneventfully as that Mayan End-of-the-World Calendar that we couldn't hear enough about last year.

Restaurant folk are a resilient lot.

As the incomparable Yogi Berra once said, "...making predictions is hard, especially when they're about the future." Before you Google that...if he didn't say it, then he should have, because it's a pretty good line and more than a little true.

Wow! We owe a huge thank you to the record number of FE&S subscribers who participated in our 2012 Best in Class study. Completing a comprehensive study of this this type is no small task. So please know that we truly appreciate all of you who took the time and made the effort to ensure your voices are heard.

If there is one lesson that I have learned well through my association with FE&S over the years, it is the tremendous value of peer recognition. I have listened spellbound as award winners from DSR of the Year to Hall of Famer to Top Achievers to Dealer of the Year have graciously accepted their place among the very best in the industry at the FE&S Dealer of the Year and Industry Awards Gala.

In a world full of me-too competitors, it is sometimes difficult to recognize true innovation. I was struck by this thought as I read this month's facility design project, which profiles Danforth Dining Hall. Much of what this University of Rochester project features will seem somewhat familiar to you: open prep areas, vegetarian and vegan options, Mongolian grill, and air conditioning. (It's OK to smile if you hadn't realized that there were still places in the continental United States that, up to this point, thought they could get by without air conditioning.)

We are especially excited to bring you this July edition of FE&S. Inside you will find a photo recap of this year's Dealer of the Year and Industry Awards Gala. We enjoyed a record turn-out this year and feel particularly good about that fact given the change in date necessitated by NATO's visit to the Windy City.

This was the subject line of one of the first of many, many e-mails, calls and even handwritten notes I received following this year's Dealer of the Year and Industry Awards Gala. Oh, what a night, indeed. Some of the evening's highlights include a record-sized crowd, excitement, humor, good will and even a few tears.

I will let you in on a little secret that many of us who have been around the foodservice industry for some time already know... this is a great industry to be involved with.

You know...the fun NRA!

Early in my career I had a mentor who preached that our growth as human beings would be determined by two things in life: the people we meet and the books that we read. One could argue that this is an oversimplification, ignoring such important influences as movies, music, art, poetry and, of course, Seinfeld. But, overall, it turned out to be pretty sage advice.

I grew up in the restaurant business believing that the menu is the roadmap to profitability for any operation. And as my career transitioned from operator to broadline DSR this message was further reinforced time and again.

Happy New Year and welcome to the 2012 version of Foodservice Equipment & Supplies magazine. We are enthusiastically embracing the changing media landscape as we strive to provide you, our readers, with the timely information and data that you require to do your jobs and run your businesses effectively.

Well, as hard as it might be to believe, it’s time to look at 2011 in either a rear view mirror or with a backup camera, depending on your commitment to pointless modern technology. (Really…we can’t turn around anymore?).

Please join me in congratulating the deserving companies recognized through the results of FE&S' 2011Best in Class study. Click below to see which companies our subscribing operators, dealers and consultants selected as the best of the best.

September is National Food Safety Education Month. And, unfortunately, the subject of food safety is not a sexy one. There...I said it. In fact, it's hard to think of a topic that is more mundane. But I urge you to read on none the less.

Join me in congratulating the FE&S 2011 Distributor Sales Rep of the Year, Scott Taylor of TriMark United East. At the conclusion of this year's competition, Scott emerged from a very talented group of deserving DSR of the month candidates to earn the year's top prize. I hope that you will enjoy learning more about Scott's story in this month's cover story.

I can only hope that you will enjoy this month's FE&S offering half as much as I have already. I have had an unmitigated blast going through the photos from the 2011 Dealer of the Year and Industry Awards Gala. What a pleasure to see so many smiling faces enjoying the company of old friends and new acquaintances. I can't imagine very many industries have a spirit of camaraderie, like the one in foodservice, that readily brings together colleagues and competitors alike to earnestly celebrate success within the community.

During a recent conversation with one of the funnier and more irreverent members of the manufacturing community, I was asked where one might go to visit the Foodservice Equipment & Supplies' Dealer Hall of Fame? Canton, Ohio? St Louis? Chicago?

Welcome to the May issue of FE&S. I am especially pleased to present this issue for a couple of reasons. Number one, it is the big reveal for our FE&S redesign project.

Springtime in Chicago means many things for those us who love Chi-town. For those of us who live here, and for anyone in a northern clime who has endured yet another brutal winter, the traditional themes of renewal are impossible to escape. The flowers blooming along Michigan Avenue aren't simply flowers; they are colorful, petaled testimonials to our perseverance and survival skills.

For those of us who attend a lot of trade shows and conferences, let's be honest: sometimes they can begin to feel a little bit stale or create a sense of déjà vu kind of like what Bill Murray experienced in the movie Groundhog Day. But The NAFEM Show, which took place last month, had an atmosphere that future shows will strive to emulate. There was an unmistakable energy that permeated the show floor as manufacturers put their best foot forward to engage a willing audience of foodservice equipment and supplies dealers, consultants, operators and service agents.

There's a question that will strike fear in the heart of any publisher. Whether it's imagined to have come from the mouth of some future toddler who asks it while offhandedly wiping out aliens inhabiting a 3D monitor forty feet away from the breakfast table with a casual sweep of his cereal spoon (note to aliens: don't visit earth, our children are prepared), or it comes from the mouth of some self-appointed television pundit who has somehow tired of discussing the future of healthcare and guns in America. Either way, for those of us in the magazine business this is a hypothetical question that gets our attention.

Happy New Year and welcome to the 2011 version of FE&S magazine. To those of you who have been faithful readers of this magazine for years, we hope that you will appreciate the many changes and improvements that we have in store for 2011.

Perhaps more than any other, this is the question that every business person must come to terms with eventually.

“This industry needs fact-based, unbiased information from a trusted source to operate effectively.”