Distributor chap | Ron Dennis, CEO, Dennis Paper and Food Service, Bangor
Photo/Tim Greenway
Ron Dennis, CEO of Dennis Paper and Food, heats the company's 60,000-square foot warehouse with energy reclaimed from its compressors
Business has been good for Dennis Paper and Food Service, so good that CEO Ron Dennis is looking into expanding the company’s 60,000-square-foot facility in Bangor to accommodate the increasing inventory of food and paper products it delivers throughout the state.
“We’re renting freezer space right now, and that’s costly,” says Dennis, the third generation of his family to guide the company since it was founded in 1908 as a soft drink bottler and beer and wine distributor.
Paying close attention to costs is just one way Dennis has managed to grow the company six-fold since 2002. He also has carved out a niche market serving independent Maine restaurateurs and leaving most of the chain franchises to mega national food distributors. “It’s worked for me because locally owned restaurateurs like to have options and they like to do business with a local, family-owned business,” he says. The company is on pace to log $45 million in sales this year, a 20% increase over 2009.
The company employs about 100 people, all key to its success, says Dennis. He’s proud that callers are greeted warmly by a receptionist, not a recording, and that customers seek advice from sales reps who listen to their clients. The customer service benchmark is high.
That is an element of the business he can control. It’s the uncontrollable elements that really get his juices flowing and engage his highly competitive nature. About six years ago, he began examining the company’s electricity expenses — a huge operating cost because of the storage coolers and freezers. “I had no control over what I paid for electricity and it made me think, it was kind of a monopoly, which I didn’t like,” he says. “So I asked, ‘What options do I have?’ I did some research and found out I could purchase power on a wholesale basis.”
Dennis set up his own power company, buying directly from the grid and lowering his electricity costs by about 15%. Since then he has explored wind and solar power systems (adapting them in the home he’s building and considering them in the building expansion) and 18 months ago installed a system to capture the heat generated by the compressors that run the coolers and freezers and redirecting it to heat his warehouse. “It’s dramatically reduced our heating bills during the winter months … I’d say cutting the bill by about half,” he says.
Dennis likes to apply that problem solving to other challenges. The company is in the midst of a training program to teach and reinforce proper lifting and loading techniques to reduce soft-tissue injuries. “It goes with my philosophy of creating a safe and pleasant work environment,” he says. “If people like what they’re doing, they’re happy, and happy people are more productive.”
It could be a lesson learned from his dad, whom Dennis credits for his competitive drive, business savvy and love of the New York Yankees. “You have to be competitive to be a Yankees fan in the middle of Red Sox nation,” he says, laughing.
He instilled his appreciation for the Yankees in his two daughters — “it took some work” — both of whom are too young to decide whether they’ll follow in the family’s footsteps. Dennis hopes they will, but he knows statistically that the chances of passing a family-owned business on to a fourth generation are slim.
If his father and grandfather could see the company today, “they’d be flabbergasted, dumbfounded” at how it’s changed and grown, Dennis says. But looking for those opportunities, seizing them and being willing to take risks is how Dennis Paper and Food Service has grown. “It’s very gratifying to grow a company profitably — it was satisfying when I owned a smaller market share — and attract good people to work here. I want to see where we can go.”
Carol Coultas
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