Quick Service!

There are times when you quickly need to go—to grow. That was the case last year for a leading national foodservice distributor. Officials recognized that customer growth necessitated a move to a larger southern California warehouse and distribution center.

The company supplies popular restaurant chains in the quick-service and casual family dining segments, as well as the regional restaurant concept market.

Speaking of quick service, this distributor asked ESI Group to quickly convert a large, 380,650-square-foot dry facility—located at the perfect intersection of two major southern California highways—into a temperature-controlled building.

ESI Group was selected to design and construct improvements to nearly 200,000 square feet of the existing shell warehouse. The project included alterations to its existing office areas as well as creation of a refrigerated food storage area, dry food storage, refrigerated loading dock and the dry dock area. It also required dock equipment upgrades.

The project also meant constructing a new battery charging and maintenance area, installing a new 4,000-amp electrical service with emergency generator and a new 1,200-squarefoot mechanical building to support a newly installed ammonia refrigeration system. Other features include an insulated metal wall panel system, an insulated metal ceiling panel system and dry pendant head sprinkler system.

ESI completed the project in just seven months. Through ESI’s value engineering process the project came in significantly under budget; which allowed the client to add more scope to the overall project. In the end, this customer was extremely pleased.

“With the additional room and ability to lay out a more efficient floor plan than our current facility, we are better able to meet the growing demands of our customers,” said the president. “This new, modern facility allows our company to service more customers and do it more effectively than was possible before.”

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