Whew! Have you missed me? I haven’t published a newsletter since Aug. 28, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been basking in the lovely Midwest weather. It took the Labor Day weekend and then the first week of September and another weekend to finish our annual E&S market forecast. As much as I try to work ahead, I finished our last PowerPoint presentation on Sunday, Sept. 7 at precisely 4:59 p.m. I know; I looked.
We set up all the electronics and AV equipment for the forecast, which is presented via Zoom, on Sept. 8 thanks to my friend and IT wizard Jason Ziolo, principal and owner of Dorian Solutions, which has been our technical backbone since we launched the newsletters in late 2018.
We presented the forecast Sept. 9—don’t worry, if you missed it, you can still buy it as noted above—with the help of my long-time forecasting partner John Muldowney and seven guest presenters.
The next morning, I jumped on a plane for Phoenix and spent three days with many old and new dealer and manufacturer friends at FEDA’s annual meeting at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale. FEDA asked me to help moderate roundtables on all the issues of how E&S gets from factories to operators. I’ve spent my entire four-plus decade career covering foodservice E&S trying to figure that out myself. It ain’t ever easy.
I’ll write more about this in a future issue. FEDA has a Future of Distribution Council that includes dealers, other channel players and manufacturers trying to help find and develop technology solutions to the many problems within the foodservice E&S supply chain in the US. As they make progress, this will greatly help your E&S suppliers better serve you, my operator readers. The FDC, as it’s called, is already making progress.
But before I let you plunge into the details of the latest MAFSI Business Barometer and all the many personnel announcements—including several very high-ranking execs—that have built up since our last newsletter, I want to inform you of the passing of two very well-known figures in the foodservice equipment business in the second half of the 20th and first part of the 21st centuries.
We’ve learned, I believe first from Paul Angrick, that David Ek, former senior executive at National Controls, Wells and other companies, former NAFEM president (1992) and recipient of the association’s prestigious President’s Award (2013), and John Frishman, longtime head of sales and then co-president at Servolift Eastern, have died. We haven’t been able to track down any details, not even obituaries. I checked with Deirdre Flynn, executive vp at NAFEM, and she hasn’t been able to find anything either.
So, I have a favor to ask: If anyone knows anything about their passings, please write me at rashton@theashtonreport.com and give me direction, please. I’ll pass anything you share on to Dee and NAFEM. Also, I’d love to collect personal remembrances of each of them. I promise to share some of what you send me at a later time.
Both Dave and John were very close personal friends, whose careers have paralleled my own for more than 45 years. I already miss them fiercely. I hate when my friends die, as much as we know death comes to all of us and is part of life. Help me celebrate them. Write, please.
In the meantime: Be well. Have fun. Do good.
Cheers, Robin
