Refrigerated Specialists Inc. (RSI) has been a part of Katie Green’s life for almost as long as she can remember. Her father is a former service technician with the Dallas-area company. As a child in the 1990s, she would spend some weekends with her dad on service calls — “before there were a lot of strict OSHA rules,” Green says.

Gina Brinegar and Costel Coca embarked on their leadership of Webb Foodservice Design in a time of stress and sorrow. Company founder Jim Webb had carefully set up a succession plan to help prepare for his death, but there was no way to really be ready to shoulder that kind of responsibility.

When Mason Greene was attending Mississippi State University (MSU), he was a member of the Bulldogs’ men’s tennis program. During his time in Starkville, Miss., Greene did very well for himself. Not only did he garner both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MSU, he also was selected for the Southeastern Conference’s All-Academic Team in tennis.

David Reeves and his wife Carolyn always hoped to retire to Florida. Though they weren’t ready to retire, when a job position opened up at Lee Health in Fort Myers, Fla., Reeves jumped at the opportunity to move to the Sunshine State. He started his position as system director, food and nutrition services with Lee Health on Oct. 5, 2020.

Foodservice Equipment & Supplies named the recipients of its 2021 Top Achiever Awards. These individual awards recognize professionals from five industry segments for their abilities to not only run market-leading companies but also raise the level of professionalism for the industry overall.

Not many can say they have been working in the foodservice industry for a half a century — or more if you count childhood activities. Harry Schildkraut can. But most of you knew that already.

Regardless of their origins, disruptive forces share one common trait: they come into an industry with little to no notice, do their thing and change the course of business as usual forever.

Consolidation, e-commerce, mergers, acquisitions and a continually changing array of unpredicted disruptive forces — welcome to today’s foodservice world. As a result, operators continue to evolve into much more elusive players, facing more financial pressures and with increasingly sophisticated needs. Product knowledge is simply no longer enough for the supply chain to serve today’s operator. To meet the demands of these operators, each of us in the foodservice supply chain must shift to a needs-based, consultative selling approach.

Kelly Roddy joined fast-casual chain Saladworks in August 2019 after 12 years of leading Schlotzsky’s, a sandwich fast-casual. He’s now positioning Saladworks to take full advantage of its niche as an established good-for-you brand despite so many others joining the party. The chain has established an ambitious goal — to double the number of Saladworks units by taking advantage of some underused nontraditional markets.