Featured: Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas

LITTLE ROCK nEWS

By Byron Hurst, Regional Director

During February of this year the Associates of Canteen Little Rock celebrated the occupancy of a newly renovated Canteen facility.  Canteen Little Rock was honored to have Senior Vice President Andy Dougherty, Midwest Division Controller Shivani Gupta, Regional Vice President Matt Hoffman, as well as Sr Manager Field Implementation Steve Crosby to attend the celebration.

 The celebration included a catered Arkansas Fish Fry, prizes for all associates, and drawings for some very nice prizes.  One of the highlights of the event came from 10-year Warehouse Associate Zulema Suazo.  After her name was drawn for one of the door prizes, a Yeti Cooler, with a full heart she said, I want to thank everyone for opportunity to be a part of the Canteen team and I pray everyday that we will always be successful and be a great place to work.  That statement seems to represent most of the Canteen associates in Little Rock.  Committed to their job, working hard to provide excellent service to their customers and realizing a good financial return, both personally and for the company.  

Canteen Little Rock had outgrown their old facility and were desperately needing a larger facility to service Central Arkansas.  Regional Director Byron Hurst said, operating in the facility has already improved their ability to service their customer base.  With the additional space their warehouse has become more accurate and efficient.  We have taken procurement, warehousing, picking and distributing product to the next level.    

Senior Vice President Andy Dougherty said he was thrilled for Little Rock to have the facility.  With the growth in the Little Rock district this new facility sets them up to continue their success.  Regional Vice President Matt Hoffman added that he wanted to thank the Little Rock management team and associates who contributed to a smooth and successful relocation, specifically their focus on associates having a great atmosphere to work in daily.      

Canteen Little Rock operates as a Hub and Spoke District.  The Little Rock facility services Central Arkansas, there are three Subbranches as well.  Texarkana: servicing SW Arkansas and NE Texas.  Nashville: servicing SW Arkansas and NE Oklahoma.  And Pine Bluff: servicing South and SE Arkansas.  Canteen has had a presence in Little Rock since the 1940’s.  Through sales and acquisitions, they have grown annual revenue from around $5M 15 years ago to current annual revenue of over $32M. 

 The Little Rock leadership team includes Byron Hurst, Regional Director, Bob Harris, Regional Finance Director, David Killough, District Ops Mgr. Central Arkansas, Jewel Mitchell, District Ops Mgr. Texarkana, and Jodi Faulkner District Ops Mgr. Pine Bluff.  Additionally, CSM’s: Jody Freeman, Kenny Beard, Carl Henrichs, Eric Jones, Scott Nickerson, and Theresa Brothers.  Warehouse Supervisors: Nicola Taylor and George McCarty.             

Striking Out Cancer For Presley - UPDATE

In July, 2023 Company Kitchen Lenexa happily donated all the snacks and beverages for a charity softball game to support a family whose nine-year-old daughter was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer. The event raised over $9500 for medical expenses. After several surgeries and procedures, Presley is now in remission and is home cancer free! THANK YOU!

BACK SNACKs PROGRAM

This program provides food for students in the Gardner School District who do not have food to eat on the weekends. Every week a team of volunteers packs the bags and delivers them to various schools in the Gardner school district, where the school counselors hand them out to the students who need them most. The monthly donation from Company Kitchen ensures 65 Families can provide weekend meals for their children.

pro-start high school culinary and management competition

The Pro-Start program is a high school program that is funded through the National Restaurant Association to introduce young adults to the industry. The program has a culinary and a management program to help prepare the student for a career in the hospitality industry. Jon Branstetter, CK-Lenexa DGM Designate, has been a mentor of a local KC school for the last 8 years. During this time, Jon has been able to help students get scholarships to further their education in the industry along with several job placements throughout the years. Each year the Pro-Start teams compete in the State competition for culinary & management. The school that Jon has been sponsoring took 1st place last year and again this year in management, and the culinary team took 2nd place last year and 3rd place this year in the competition. Helping these young professionals grow in the industry is an awesome way that Compass can give back to the community and our industry, as well as fun and rewarding for Jon!

taking it to the streets

Canteen Lenexa partnered with a great organization, Taking it to the Streets, to support Law Enforcement during the Chiefs Super Bowl parade. Canteen handed out 1000 cups of coffee to the officers who helped control the crowd of 1.3 million people in attendance to celebrate our amazing KC Chiefs! Although the ending was a horrific tragedy, the 28 degree temperature at the start of the parade saw thousands of people lining up to watch. Our Men and Women in Blue were all onsite and enjoying hot coffee from Canteen.

DYNAMIC HAPPENINGS IN MISSOURI

We’re Moving!!

St. louis is busy preparing to relocate the branch. We will be moving fifteen miles northeast of current location. The warehouse is double the operating space we currently have! Employees are excited to have a fresh look.

Veterans Community Project

Established in Kansas City, Missouri, by a group of combat Veterans, Veterans Community Project provides high quality and well-developed strategic services that enable Veterans to meet the challenges of day-to-day living, resolve immediate crises, and move towards permanent stability. Using Kansas City as a blueprint, VCP has begun its work of serving at-risk and homeless Veterans across the United States starting with Longmont, Colorado; St. Louis, Missouri; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

They started the St. Louis community project two years ago. Canteen has partner with them for events to supply food and drinks. This past year they had their first residents and asked us to join them for the lighting ceremony. We made welcome baskets for the residents and their pets.

Thankful Thursdays

We celebrate our employees every Thursday. We apricate all their hard work throughout the week and take time out of our busy schedule to show they how much we appreciate them. We find different themes, what happened on this day, birthdays of the month, football, chili cookoff and pumpkin carving are favorites. Managers get to interact with every employee on Thursdays.

Be a Star of the Month

associate spotlight: holly record

At Dynamic Vending we place a high level of importance on making sure our facility is neat and tidy for our customers benefit as well as for the safety and well-being of all of our associates. The only way we can do so is with the help of our rockstar associate Holly Record! Her duties of keeping both the office and the warehouse clean have been invaluable to us here since she started with us in 2018 as a partnership in the MERS Goodwill Supported Employment Program. Everyday Holly comes in with a bright smile and a contagious sense of cheerfulness while also being a pretty good comedian. Her diligence is exemplified by always staying busy and productive with a broom or squeegee and she recently has begun helping tag some food with dates for the pass-through process. She shows initiative with her work by filling out repair/request forms with her retention specialist Denise Debose, and then shares those with us, always striving to improve the day-to-day activities in the building. Her co-workers describe her as “an all-around good person who is very dedicated, friendly and a professional at making sure our floors aren’t littered with cardboard or tricky little stickers”.  We are proud to have Holly as part of the Dynamic team!

Nick Block, DGM, Dynamic Vending

across the division

milestone anniversaries this month

35 Years
JEFFREY WISNIEWSKI, District Manager, Norton Shores

10 Years

MIGUEL MORALES, ROUTE DRIVER - OFFICE COFFEE, CRS CHICAGO

RICHARD GOLDMAN, ROUTE DRIVER - MICROMARKET, Canteen Little Rock

WALTER HEISSERER, SERVICE TECHNICIAN, Dynamic Vending Inc

BRENDA PULSFORT, ROUTE DRIVER - OFFICE COFFEE, Bloomington OCS

JAMES HURLEY, ROUTE DRIVER - SMARTSERVICE, Oshkosh Vending

5 Years

Olivia Dicke, COOK, SHEBOYGANCOMMISSARY

FERNANDO PEREZ ROSALES, ORDER BUILDER, St Paul Vending

AURORA RAMIREZ, WAREHOUSE ATTENDANT, Chicago Central Vending

ROMAN TAVARES, ROUTE DRIVER - SMARTSERVICE, Chicago Central Vending

NATALIE SWEENEY ASST, CUSTOMER SVC, Market-Chicago Central

TAMI ROOT, VENDING ATTENDANT, Galesburg

VICTOR CASTELLANOS RODRIGUEZ, ROUTE DRIVER - MICROMARKET, Market-Chicago Central

KENTRAL DAVIS, WAREHOUSE/DELIVERY, Little Rock Vending

news from midwest dining

Canteen appleton award

In Appleton, vending and the commissary share the same building – and last November our location was awarded a Certificate of Congratulations as an Exemplary Employer from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation for encouraging the full participation of individuals with disabilities while creating an inclusive workforce.   The commissary has 4 employees that started with a job coach and vending has 3 so we have a total of 7 employees in our building that are valued team members.

Sue Zdanovec, Regional Catering Director - Midwest

Potawatomi Zoo opens

On March 29th, Canteen Dining opened the new Bear Lodge at the Potawatomie Zoo in South Bend, IN. Julie Nykamp, our General Manager at the site, along with our team, wowed the crowds on opening day with revenues overall volume exceeding our expectations.  Julie, Rick Roush, our RD and Camellia Austin, our DGM, worked countless hours ensuring that the new facility would open without any issues.  Revenues continue to outperform expectations and we are still open “limited hours”!!

Bob Sempek, VP of Operations, CK/Canteen Dining

delish food truck has a new home

Canteen and Company Kitchen now have a fully operational food truck in the Omaha area.  The truck debuted the first week in April, celebrating our Team members and the Omaha warehouse and offices on 60th and Grover.  The Food Truck will partner with our dining and distribution clients in providing great food with a fun atmosphere for their special events.  Already for the month of May, we have done events for 650 people at Great West Casualty in South Sioux City, NE, 200 person event for a Oatey (vending client in Omaha) and a 225 person event at the Marriot Reservation Center in Omaha (Canteen vending account).  Our team, led by Jack Conley, are looking forward to doing some great things with our 8 different concept menus.

Bob Sempek, VP of Operations, CK/Canteen Dining

Corteva catering at perry high school

Our Corteva Johnston, IA team led by Chef Manager Whitney Sanders, partnered with our client to provide free lunch to the staff of Perry High School where there had been a shooting that killed one student and the principal.  This event was for the day the staff returned to work. “Thank you so very much.  It was such a lovely lunch you provided.   You have no idea how comforted and appreciative the staff is.  They are experiencing things no one could ever be prepared for.  Your kindness has certainly paved the road to healing.” - Martha Stetzel, teacher. 

In addition to the catering for the staff, Whitney and her team made seven meals for the family of the little boy that was killed at the school, which she delivered to the home. The family was very grateful, and I am very proud our Corteva team.

Bob Sempek, VP of Operations, CK/Canteen Dining