"We serve people that make their living serving people. We support artists whose art serves the most basic human need: the need to eat."

Meet Steve Ziegler , Industry Expert at WebstaurantStore. With over 30+ years at the Clark Associates family of companies, Steve has experienced our growth first-hand from the very beginning. Curious about how he's seen us change and grow into the business we are today? Read his insights below!

Tell us about your time with the company:

I started at Clark in 1989, working in the warehouse. Back then all of our companies fit into a small building in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, the heart of Lancaster County’s Amish Country. Through the next several years I drove our delivery trucks and became the shipping director in the warehouse. In 1996, I moved into the office to do inside sales for our then very traditional food service dealership. In that role, I had my own customers and also assisted our top outside salesperson, and even did a bit of purchasing. During this time, I also worked weekends in the Lancaster branch of The Restaurant Store for six months while I saved for an engagement ring. From there I became an inside sales manager, then a sales manager, and then ended up in large account sales. In 2009, I moved to WebstaurantStore as Industry Expert, where I’ve been ever since, although what I do in that capacity has changed greatly over the years and I am sure will change greatly going forward.??

What started with me simply helping to check content and categorize items changed, within a year, to me helping with our PPC advertising and SEO efforts, starting our social media, writing and “starring” in our videos, training staff on products, writing blog posts among other things. Some of those things I was asked to do and some I just did on my own. In the years since, that has changed quite a bit, to the point that my supervisor once gave me the best job description you could ask for, “just do the things Steve Ziegler does." Ultimately, that means pushing things forward in any way that my experience and talents will allow. Nowadays, I mostly work from home, doing some social media work, organizing vendor trainings, doing voiceovers, checking our site content and categorization, doing some reputation management, answering lots of product and industry questions, and tweaking our site search among many other things. Obviously, keeping abreast of industry and product knowledge and all the changes that come along are very important.?

I do get into various offices a few times a month, sometimes cooking or supplying food for various teams, and sometimes cooking and critiquing products at our RAD center (R&D).?

How has the company's technology changed?

First, and most obvious, the internet came to be, and that changed the whole industry. Much of the change is due to our company. We weren’t the first food service supplier on the Web, but we were the first to do it right: committing to having inventory, fast shipping, great content, and great customer service. That changed everything and to the chagrin of many competitors, made pricing on these commercial-grade products very transparent. Back in the day, there was next to no price transparency in our industry. Foodservice dealers mostly had commissioned salespeople and those folks were out to maximize margins--often to a ridiculous extent. One thing that was cool about our company back in those days is we were not commissioned. We had a salary and bonuses based on how we managed long-term relationships. In fact, if I had what Fred Clark thought was too much margin on an item, he’d call me into the office and I’d get the “pigs are cute, hogs get slaughtered” speech. But now, with WebstaurantStore being so well known, any customer can check pricing on their phone on our site. In that way, we’ve managed to make pricing much more fair even for businesspeople who are not our customers. Before any competitor’s salespeople walk through the door to talk about a product, there is an awfully good chance they are checking out our site for both pricing and product information. That’s another reason our content accuracy?is so important – everyone uses it.

Warehouses aren’t typically thought of as hubs of technology, but our warehouses certainly are. I remember touring our warehouses years ago and being envious as loaders stood in trucks and the correct products were automatically sent to them by an automated conveyor. I was so envious because I didn’t even have a dock for several years when I was in the warehouse, let alone “smart” conveyor belts. The tech in the warehouses has exploded since I last toured one. We have robots that automatically create boxes to the size of the items they’ll contain, pack them, and label them. By doing this they lower shipping costs, lower customer complaints, speed shipping, and are great for the environment. Our newest warehouses will have robotic picking of orders, which further increases speed, accuracy, and efficiency. It’s incredible what has been done there, and the thing I love is that they’ve done this to manage growth instead of replacing people.?

As far as the office, when I started some of my tools were a fax machine, a terminal with an orange or green font, and an adding machine. Product knowledge could only be gained by going to the 12’ wide catalog rack and perusing catalogs. You needed a lot of “want to” to learn about the restaurant E&S business back in those days. Now I’m not even in an office--I work in the guest room of my house. I don’t call people, I video chat. If I want some data on product demand, I have a ton of resources to figure that out on my own, but if it is a more specific request, we have a whole data team working wonders with PowerBI and other tools. Now we can do everything from forecasting to writing using the AI tools available.?

How have our marketing strategies grown??

When I started in sales, for the traditional distribution channel, marketing was word-of-mouth, cold calling salespeople, and a desktop calendar with our logo on it that we gave as a Christmas present. With the advent of The Restaurant Stores, we started a flyer program. Now? While there have been tons of tech changes, the biggest change is how many people we have doing marketing. We have hundreds of people doing incredibly diverse jobs requiring all sorts of different talents. We have an SEO team, a paid marketing team, and a social media team that make sure WebstaurantStore can’t be missed. Videographers, food stylists, photographers, and even a team of 3d modelers and renderers work hard to give our customers the closest thing we can to a “hands-on” experience online. Our content writers deliver the best content on the Web for any business supplies, and our long-form writer's work is often quoted and/or linked to in major online publications. Our huge design team not only makes our site beautiful and usable, but they create a myriad of marketing assets for all of our marketing efforts.?

What makes the Clark Associates family of companies industry leaders?

When we have accurate product descriptions, we have happy customers, happy vendors, and we are happy because we get fewer customer service calls. When our customer service team can answer product questions accurately and confidently, we have happier customers who keep coming back. I’ve had the pleasure of organizing and leading hundreds of vendor trainings, trips to vendor facilities, factory tours, trips to the NRA (National Restaurant Association) show, and the NAFEM show over the years. I can’t tell you how proud I was when I looked at the NAFEM CFSP (Certified Food Service Professional) “Wall of Fame” and there were over 180 Clark and Webstaurant employees on it. I’m glad to be able to have a small part in helping them get that designation. We also encourage dozens of our employees to get their ServSafe Manager certification. That may seem like overkill to some for people that won’t be working in a kitchen, but it’s important to us to have a deep understanding of food safety in order to help our customers.

Most of all, I hope some of my enthusiasm for the industry has rubbed off on people. We serve people that make their living serving people. We support artists whose art serves the most basic human need: the need to eat. I’m proud of the ways we’ve made the business of food easier for the people in the business. I’m looking forward to spreading that gospel for years to come.?

Cheers until the next edition of The Clark Connection!