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BUSINESS
Colonial Food Service Equipment supplies variety of businesses, open to the public
Vince Agee is the owner of Colonial Food Service Equipment located at 611 8th St., in Huntington.
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HUNTINGTON -- It's hard to tell the scope of the business at 611 8th St. when you're looking at it from the outside.
Through the storefront windows of Colonial Food Service Equipment, you see kitchen and restaurant supplies. The business's show room has an array of items that an at-home cook or restaurant-owner might need -- aprons, trays, cutlery, ranges, even tables and booths.
What you don't see are the bigger items, such as walk-in coolers and economy-sized fryers, in the warehouse. And not only does the dealer sell the items, but it designs kitchens, delivers and installs the items and repairs them.
After 40 years in the business, Vince Agee -- who co-owns Colonial Food Service Equipment with wife, Joy Agee -- has learned how to adapt to an ever-changing market.
He started in the business at age 17 to work his way through Marshall University, where he studied business. It was 1970, and he chose the job because it paid $1.65 per hour, and all the other businesses at the time were offering $1.60.
He's been there ever since.
"I like to say that a nickel changed my life," Agee said.
He bought the business from its previous owner in 1982, and has been growing and adapting ever since. He did $350,000 in business his first year, and this past year, the 10 employees of Colonial Food Service Equipment did about $2.5 million in business.
The lion's share of the business is in supplying commercial and institutional kitchens -- restaurants and kitchens for schools, churches, hospitals and various other organizations. It installed the entire Harless Dining Hall at Marshall University six years ago. It also has done local elementary schools, Martha and Kellogg, and provides cutlery to culinary students at MCTC.
This past fall, it provided a great deal of materials to the production crew for "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" to use in Jamie's Kitchen, now called Huntington's Kitchen. The reality TV show about teaching Huntington residents to cook more nutritious foods is set to air on ABC beginning March 26.
"They purchased quite a bit of stuff from us," Agee said. "Most of the items in his kitchen over there came from us."
Those included utensils, chefs outfits, range tops, stainless steel work tables and more. "It was nice that they shopped local," Agee said. It will continue to supply the Kitchen now that Ebenezer Outreach has taken over.
Colonial Food Service also provided some of the equipment for Prime, a new restaurant set to open soon on 4th Avenue. It also installs and services Bunn coffee-makers, working with Starbucks and McDonald's locations within a 75-mile radius.
And it serves school systems in Cabell, Wayne, Putnam and Mason counties and farther south into West Virginia, as well as in Kentucky and Ohio.
On any given day, Colonial food service employees will be scattered throughout the region working on a variety of projects, Agee said. On Friday, for example, they were delivering $25,000 in mixers and slicers to Fayette County Schools, repairing a coffee-maker in the teacher's lounge at Cabell Midland High School in Ona, fixing one walk-in cooler at a Huntington restaurant and another cooler in a Symmes Valley school in Lawrence County. Meanwhile, it was selling a uniform out of its showroom to a new chef at Hibachi.
Along with Agee, employees include his two sons, Vince Jr. in inside sales and installation and Greg Agee in inside sales management and service, as well as Marti Brienza in sales, Regina Adams in bookkeeping, Ron Eplin in service, Rodney Dunn in warehouse and installation, father and son Dwain and Josh Sloane in service, and Tom Williams in outside sales.
The business is part of a buying group with 150 other dealers, which gives it clout to get the best prices from its vendors, Agee said.
"So we can be competitive with the Internet," he said.
The Web is one of two things that have changed the business over the years, Agee said. The other is what he called "broadliners," which are large food service companies that also sell kitchen supplies and equipment.
What's helped Colonial survive is growing its delivery, installation and servicing business, not to mention designing entire kitchens.
"Someone can tell Vince what they want to have on their menu, and he can tell them exactly what they need (in their kitchen)," Adams said.
In recent years, Colonial Food Service also has been trying to increase its walk-in business. With the increase in cooking television shows, people know a lot more about cooking and what supplies would be helpful, but few know that they can walk in and shop at their retail store, Agee said.
Every once in a while, some who watches Rachael Ray on TV will come in and want a specific cooking supply, like a Sakura knife, Brienza said. But she doesn't think people realize what a good deal they can get there on such high quality kitchen supplies.
She's hoping to beef that type of business up a bit.
"I want people to know that we're open to the public," said Brienza, who is Cuban and speaks Spanish, a benefit for Mexican restaurant owners. "(Shoppers) are under the impression that we're a wholesaler and they're not allowed to stop by."
And if they do, they can expert advice from people who know the products well. Brienza, for example, can explain what appeals to people about the Sakura knife, which has a curve to one edge and allows the cook more ease it cutting things quickly. And you can get a certain blade that helps avoid wet vegetables and meats from sticking to your knife, she explained.
This is the type of help that you're not going to get from a larger department store or a catalogue, Agee said.
Along with a high institutional quality, "We have the expertise and knowledge," he said.
Jimmie Carder, manager of Jim's Steak & Spaghetti House, said her father, Jim Tweel, had done business with Colonial Food Service for "as long as anybody around here can remember," and she's continued that relationship since her father passed away. Colonial recently put in steam tables in the restaurant's kitchen, she said.
"They've always had good product, and they're just always really nice, very efficient and helpful and willing to be right there for me," she said. She likes the proximity, too.
"It makes it nice to run over and get something if I need it -- all the things you want in a business," Carder said.
