TAUNTON, MA (November 30, 2011)—New England wholesale food distributor AGAR was recently awarded with the “Adversity Award” at the Family Business Awards held recently in Boston.
With a whole host of factors including commodity prices, fuel costs, world market conditions and the value of the dollar, the food business has been hit hard when it comes to managing costs. AGAR moves millions of pounds of seafood, beef and other food items through their Taunton facility each year and has continued to control costs for their customers and provide solutions to them. Despite these external factors, AGAR continues to help small independent restaurants stay in business.
“The food business is a very low profit margin business states Karen Bressler, president and CEO of AGAR. “We have to do a lot of work and move a lot of boxes seemly and efficiently through the system and satisfy all different types of customers in the process. If anything goes out of tilt, it affects the business. At AGAR we try to anticipate adversity and stay flexible so that we can handle the difficult situations as they may occur.”
Another reason AGAR received the Adversity Award was the personal battle with breast cancer that CEO Karen Bressler faced in the past two years. While personally setting her back, Ms. Bressler came through healthier than ever and continues to manage the day to day operations at AGAR.
The team at AGAR while many were cutting back and laying off, set out to expand the business by adding on an additional 50,000 S/F of warehouse space in the past 18 months. This expansion allowed the wholesale food distributor the capability to expand product offerings and gave them the ability to tap new markets in the future. During that same year AGAR also underwent an entire ERP system conversion.
“It has been said that nothing comes easy, and for those of us in the food distribution industry, that has held true over the past couple years,” states Bressler. “We have a solid team here with an incredible amount of experience and we know what it takes to make it through tough times and bad economies.”
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