Packed Out-The Birth of Modern Day Broadline Food Service Distribution

It was the company I work for is over 100 years old that’s true. But the restaurant industry that we have today and the big companies that serve them is a relatively new thing. Pizza Hut, that chain wasn’t bought out and made big by Pepsi until the late 1970s.
Sysco wasn’t established until the mid to late 1970s.
The US Foods that we have today that company wasn’t really formed until the late 1990s.

My parents are in there early 60s and my mom said they never really went out to eat as kids. She said her first recollection of going out for pizza wasn’t until the year 1977.

With the exception of like McDonalds and some burger chains. And like Howard Johnson’s back in the day, the big restaurant chains of today, you have really didn’t get popping till the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The company I work for the company fathers said in Grand Rapids in the 1950s there was one hotel with a restaurant, and a handful of hot dog stands and a lunch counter or 2 and that was it. Hell frozen French fries those were in there infancy in the late 1950s it wouldn’t have been for another 20-30 years before the technology on those had caught up and came around. But the whole restaurant industry was a lot smaller back in those days and more concentrated. An Italian neighborhood would have a pizza place, but my grandmother used to say that’s no meal for a working man and now look at it you have at least here in Ohio Pizza places on every other corner and a huge variety of restaurants to eat at.

Think back to the 1970s and even earlier 1980s how many food service companies did you see running doubles or other wise out on the Highways at night or during the day? Probably not that many, maybe 1 or 2 but nothing like today where they are every other truck. GFS in 1988 had 4 trucks covering Toledo to Ashtabula Ohio. It wasn’t until like 1993 that, that number was increased to 16 trucks. To cover roughly the same amount of territory.
What I’m saying is the modern day restaurant industry that fuels all of this is really a newer thing yes a lot of these companies were around in one form or another years ago, but the market wasn’t what it is today it really wasn’t till the 1990s that stuff really started getting big.

US Foods that we have today wasn’t formed until 1999 now the parent companies Sexton, SE Rrycroff and Alliant were around although I don’t know the history of Alliant they seem newer compared to Rycroff and Sexton.

A lot of the big chains did it them selves Fast Food Merchandising was Hardee’s in house supplier it wasn’t until the 1980s that MBM bought FFM out. And MBM he wasn’t anything but a one trick pony selling meat. He wasn’t into all the big chain restaurant logistics until the 1980s really. McLane Food Service that we have today they didn’t get Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC until Pepsi sold off Pepsi Food Service in 1997. But prior to the 1990s how many times did anyone see PFS trucks pulling turnpike doubles on the Florida turnpike? Probably not that much.

The modern restaurant industry and supply chain behind it that exists today is a relatively newer thing, Pizza Hut wasn’t established until the late 1950s and it would have been another 25 years before Pepsi bought the chain and decided to take it national. Before then it was just 2 guys in a brick building in Kansas City. That’s all I’m saying. It wasn’t like it is today the company I work for that didn’t start hitting massive sales numbers until the middle 1990s. That’s all I’m saying.
Where I work it took like from 1898 till like 1995 to hit a billion dollars in sales. Now a days we’re doing well over a billion in sales every year.

 

Our older guys said for years we used to have like the ramp board ramps with the bend in them you see movers use them still to this day. I heard those things were awful it wasn’t until probably early 2000s that they switched to the modern day aluminum ramp.

 

That sounds spot on to me. US Food Service is really just a hodge podge of corporate mergers and hostile take overs.

 

It’s interesting you say that. @Radman had a stint a year or so back when he worked at McLane and he was delivering to a lot of older Pizza Huts that he said you know when these restaurants open they were open with the thought in mind that people would take the family there once in a while or maybe once a week at the most. Not for dinner every night like they do now. He said a lot of the older pizza huts were ordering way more then they had room for because the restaurants weren’t built for the entire town to eat there every night.
When I was in high school it was common for kids to eat at Longhorn Steak House at least 4 nights a week Monday-Thursday.

 

Rykoff merged with JP Food Service in 1997 to form US Food Service which would eventually become US Foods in 2005. I knew it was late 1990s my 1999 date was off, but only by a couple years.