If you aspire to be the best in the world at something, you need to start by being different from everyone else. After all, if you are not different (really different!), how can you be the best? At Parts Town, we focus passionately on our differentiation. We talk about it every day.
While marketing, e-commerce, customer service, data management, and operations are all important to becoming a successful distributor of restaurant equipment parts, we have but one true weapon that makes us who we are: our culture. It is what makes us truly different, and our culture is the only source of sustained competitive advantage that we have.
It starts with our core values: integrity, passion, courage and innovation. Our values are more than just words to us. We hire people based on their fit to our values. No experience required here! Talent, enthusiasm and fit to our culture are what matter to us. We train to our values, measure people against our values, and reward and recognize people based on performance against our values. We have no commission programs, no individual sales objectives, no sales contests, no sales awards — it’s all about living the values.
Why? We believe that people with high integrity, with extraordinary passion, the courage to be different, and the desire to innovate will deliver in amazing ways for our customer and manufacturer partners.
One element of our culture that people find interesting is our investment in employee relations activities. Every month, we allocate a budget to employee relations. More than just investing, we put the control or our investments in the hands of our employees. Teams volunteer to lead our employee relations activities from beginning to end. Recent results include a gaming area (with ping pong, pop-a-shot, darts and foosball), video games in our break room, competitions during lunch, company BBQs and more.
The outcome? Loyal employees who enthusiastically take care of our customers and virtually no turnover in the past five years.
Another part of our culture is bringing our brand to life in a fun, engaging way. Our brand is represented in many, many ways: through our marketing, our website, our people on the phones, and even our building — all fun examples of how we bring our brand to life. Our colors are red and black, so our desks are red and black, our walls are red and black, our signs are red and black, even the shelves in our warehouse are red and black. We love red and black. It’s part of who we are. And, of course, you don’t have to look far to see our mission, our values and our differentiation, which are visible from virtually anywhere you stand in our office (yes, in red and black).
The bottom line is that culture really, really, really matters to us. In our mission, we commit to genuine OEM parts, a unique customer experience and the industry’s best marketing and e-commerce. We deliver this through a culture of uniquely enthusiastic employees that live our core values and have fun doing it. I have learned that the most important part of my role at Parts Town is culture. Everything great that we do is the result of the culture we are working tirelessly to build.