Designs United East Showroom of Restaurant Supplies (p.5)


Design	Equipment	Supplies

When customers peer through the large square window suspended in the back of the showroom, they are surprised to find a fully loaded display kitchen. According to the folks at TriMark, it's not uncommon to find many of them actually trying things out in the realistic setting. As much as for beauty's sake as well as to save space, the dealer designed the model to show their customers the "possibilities." According to President Jerry Hyman, it also serves as a valuable tool when working with customers on design projects. "Sometimes we assume that just because we understand plans and know how to read them that our customers understand them, too," he says. "For those who do not, you just can't beat the value of taking a chef or restaurant owner to our display kitchen, putting him or her behind the chefs line and saying, 'No, I mean a double over-shelf like this. Plans are one thing, but there is nothing like working with the actual product."

n TriMark Acquires
    S.S. Kemp & Co.

n Purveyor of
    the Year Award

n Customer Choice
    Dealer Award

n Bob Halpern
    Retires after
    45 years

n MRA Honors
    Jeffrey Bean

n TriMark Hires
    US Foodservice
    President

n Dealer of the Year

n DSR of the Year

n Cheesecake
    Factory

n Technology and
    Logistics

n Design of the Year

n E&S Boutique
    Style

n Raves for Balboa
    Bay Project

n Making More
    With Less

n Best New Product

n Professional
    Training

n Dining at the
    Bottom

Keeping it Fresh

While this is good news to everyone at TriMark's ears. President Jerry Hyman says that investing in the upscale look "wasn't so much to make the sale as much as it was to put ideas in the customer's head... to provide them with ideas that they could use in their own kitchen."

And part of the dealer's strategy for keeping the showroom fresh is always making sure there are plenty of them. As in the case of the equipment in the display kitchen, tabletops are changed once a month and whenever the opportunity presents itself the entire showroom is decorated to reflect a particular season or holiday-something that would be difficult to do if it was " 10,000 square feet," Hyman says.

Of course, with that flexibility comes additional costs and the ever-present challenge to deliver the "wow factor," which he says is a must to keep customers intrigued-and coming back.

So far, they seem to be doing just that.

"When customers come into our showroom they get excited, Hyman says." Sometimes when I see them looking at our China display or our tabletops, I can see them taking mental notes, wondering how they can create the same look in their restaurant.

"We may not be able to point to a particular sale and say 'sure, because we did this in the showroom we sold that'. 'But we believe that it separates us from our competitors and makes us that much more valuable to our customers."