Rapids Wholesale Equipment
By Laura Doty, Contributing Editor -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 12/15/2004
 The owners of Rapids Wholesale Equipment are (L. to R.) Vice President Geri Schmitt, President Joe Schmitt, Vice President Diane Dodds and Executive Vice President Joe Dodds. |
Scale & Scope
When purchased in 1992 by Joe and Diane Dodds and Joe and Geri Schmitt, Rapids Wholesale Equipment's sales were about $5 million annually. In the 12 years since, the Marion, Iowa-based firm has been growing steadily under its new ownership and management, broadening its customer base and adding four locations, including a facility Design department located in Minneapolis. Last year, Rapids did business in excess of $14 million. Its projection for sales this year is approximately $15 million, and the firm currently stocks about 4,200 SKUs and employs 42 full-time staff. Rapids Wholesale is a member of the EDI buying group.
Rapids Wholesale operates under the leadership of co-owners Joe Schmitt, president, and Joe Dodds, executive vice president, as well as spouses Geri Schmitt, who helps to manage employee benefits, and Diane Dodds, who is involved in contract sales and employee management. Both Geri and Diane also serve as Rapids' vice presidents.
Neither Joe Schmitt nor Joe Dodds had specific industry experience when they took over at Rapids in 1992, but both were ready to learn from scratch. They relied on other industry leaders, manufacturers and manufacturers' reps for guidance and industry knowledge, according to Schmitt. "Joe's experience in operations and my understanding of the financial aspects of an operation proved to be very valuable in our early years ... Our basic business knowledge, along with education in direct marketing was helpful as we grew to include walk-in, catalog, web-based and design-build sales," Schmitt related.
"The real key to success for us regarding growing our business and moving forward has been to focus on developing and training all of our 42 employees. In the last two years, we have all been devoting significant time to education. Our staff, as a result, are being equipped with the expertise, motivation and problem-solving capabilities to maintain a high level of customer service that is necessary to this full-service dealership's success," Schmitt emphasized. The dealership, a FEDA member since 1999, has made use of FEDA training programs, as well as specific manufacturers' factory training and training modules developed internally.
"We're striving to build a solid management team who thrive on their leadership roles and responsibilities," added Dodds. "We want the high-energy, fast-paced work life here at Rapids to remain positive, with a corresponding environment of respect and support for our staff. This translates into the ability to provide the high level of customer service necessary for our dealership's success," he commented.
Rapids Wholesale currently serves about 700 active customers, including independent restaurants, chain restaurants, schools, B&I accounts and beer wholesalers.
Throughout Rapids Wholesale's growth as a foodservice equipment dealership the company has also retained its unique core-competency — serving the needs of beer wholesalers and bar owners who represent the origins of the company's business and clientele. Staff members at Rapids Wholesale are still involved in designing draft beer systems for clients. About 10% of this dealer's sales volume is currently represented by work with beer wholesalers.
 Rapids offers a wide variety of equipment and supplies in its showroom at its Marion, Iowa, headquarters. |
In the service-oriented business of running an E&S dealership, it is not uncommon for successful companies to be ready to go "above and beyond" to solve problems for customers. Recently, the team at Rapids Wholesale Equipment demonstrated a willingness to jump completely "out of the box" by providing services generally not under a dealership's purview in order to devise a solution to a problem for a new account.
In 2003, Keystone Senior, LLC a firm responsible for developing and constructing assisted-living facilities for seniors, was working to build a new location in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and contacted Rapids Wholesale for help on the project. "This was an unsolicited referral," explained Joe Schmitt. "We became involved in the Keystone Cedars project because a contractor on another job we were involved with was so impressed with the work that Kirk Ulveling, one of our project managers, had accomplished in getting that project successfully on track. The contractor involved in this unrelated project passed his recommendation on to the Keystone contractor, noting that Ulveling was 'someone who could really get things done,'" Schmitt related.
During the discovery process for the Keystone Cedars facility, as the Rapids team worked to revise incomplete foodservice designs and thoroughly understand the scope of the project, a major concern on the part of the client came to light. All the furniture for the Keystone Cedars facility, including 62 assisted-living apartments and 18 apartments designated for Alzheimer patients at the facility, was scheduled to be delivered before the company would be ready to receive and install the items on-site.
 Rapids Project Manager Kirk Ulveling at work. |
Although the furniture was not purchased through Rapids Wholesale, Ulveling came up with a solution for the customer, one that involved utilizing the dealership's resources including its ample warehouse storage space and fleet of delivery trucks. After Ulveling explained the customer's problem to the project team at Rapids, a proposal was created for Keystone Senior whereby this dealer would assume responsibility for accepting delivery of the furniture destined for the new seniorcare facility, including inspecting and warehousing the products. The customer was charged for the service provided by Rapids based on going rates for storage and delivery of pallets of product. Rapids Wholesale then handled the redelivery and installation of all the furniture to Keystone Cedars before the facility opened in June 2004.
"Going out of our way to alleviate this potential headache for our customer had a very positive outcome for all concerned," commented Schmitt. "The chain was delighted not to have to find a public warehouse to handle this problem, as well as its ability to retain control of delivery schedules and simplify shipment coordination through us. We retained a new multi-unit facility contract, a major current focus for us in terms of growing our business, and we are currently involved with the initial design work on new units being built by Keystone Senior on the East Coast. During the course of working with them on the Cedars Keystone project, we also became the smallwares provider for the whole job — an opportunity for a dealership that can represent 15% to 20% of total sales — and a component of our business that we are also very happy to grow, " Schmitt concluded.
| HISTORIES & FOUNDERS | |
Rapids Wholesale Equipment Co. was founded in 1936 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, by an ex-beer salesman named Harry Ribble. Ribble had worked as a national sales manager for the Pabst Brewing Co. and recognized a great opportunity to form a business providing draught beer dispensing equipment for beer wholesalers in the post-Prohibition era. Thus, Rapids originally operated mainly as a manufacturer during its early years, providing component parts for beer dispensing, as well as walk-in coolers, refrigerated bottle boxes and draft beer dispensers. The beer wholesalers working with Rapids became a natural sales force for the company and, through the years, Rapids began to receive requests through them from bar and tavern owners for more products to support bar service. During the post- WWll boom years of growth for bars and restaurants in the United States, the company expanded its business beyond parts manufacturing into the sale of foodservice equipment and supplies, as evidenced by Rapids' catalogs from the '40s and '50s. Nonetheless, regional bar owners remained the core customers for Rapids Wholesale during those years. In the early '70s, a transition in company management occurred at Rapids when Doug Van Meter took over from Ribble. The company slowly continued to evolve, expanding its product lines and customer base with the addition of a second Rapids location in Cincinnati in 1972 (which was later relocated to Wilder, Ky.). However, by the early '90s,Van Meter and first-generation Ribble family members still involved in Rapids Wholesale had decided to sell the company. Present co-owners Joe and Geri Schmitt and Joe and Diane Dodds purchased Rapids Wholesale Equipment Co. in February 1992 and continue to operate the company as a family business, as Joe Dodds and Geri Schmitt are brother and sister. Both Schmitt and Dodds had previously been employed by large corporations; Schmitt as a CPA at Arthur Andersen, and Dodds as a project engineer for Alcoa. "I had gotten to a point in my life where I was really looking for a new opportunity, something I could build on my own rather than always working for some big company," explained Schmitt. "I discovered that Rapids Wholesale Equipment was for sale, which seemed to be the chance I was looking for, and went to Joe [Dodds] to ask for help with the financing. It so happened that he was as interested as I was in the ownership, growth and management of a privately owned business, so we purchased Rapids together and became partners in the company along with our wives." The new owners' approach and philosophy for growing Rapids Wholesale into a successful, fullservice equipment and supplies dealership were to add services, acquire new skill sets and purchase companies and locations that seemed most likely to best serve the dealership's growing customer base. The first acquisition for the company after the change in ownership took place in '92 was of Tri Tec Equipment, a small dealership with a few regional chain accounts, which was purchased in 1994. A Rapids branch was opened in Greensboro, N.C., in 1994, as well. By 1999, Rapids Wholesale had outgrown its original location, so the company built and relocated to a new headquarters in Marion, Iowa (a small sister city considered part of Cedar Rapids). The new location provided Rapids with 40,000-square-feet for warehousing and a showroom that includes a test kitchen. In 2001, the company acquired Advance Contract Equipment and Design of Minneapolis. |
