General Parts Group Lends Support to the Minnesota School Food Buying Group

General Parts Group is pleased to have recently provided its test kitchen facility as a meeting space for the annual food buying event held by the Minnesota School Food Buying Group (MSFBG). There are approximately 150 school districts involved with the MSFBG and the event was attended by members including Foodservice Directors, Assistant Directors and Head Cooks as well as representatives from the Foodservice Brokerage and equipment manufacturer community.

This is a critical event for the group as it is where products are selected for inclusion in school menus for the next twelve months. The group is looking for quality nutritious products that work well with both their existing equipment configuration and within their budgets. Anoka Schools helps head of the legal bidding of the program and Laure Metzger the Director from Westonka Schools heads up the program.

The event was a great success with about 100 people attending. As our foodservice test kitchen is an extremely flexible space it had been configured in the style of an exhibition food show allowing the attendees to easily browse and sample the vendor offerings. Alongside the activities in the test kitchen our large conference room was put to good use for a 30 person MSFBG meeting and another dozen Directors from the West Metro Directors Association used our small conference room for their monthly meeting.

The MSFBG partnered this year with North Star Commercial Agents who represents equipment manufacturers such as the Middleby brands, Continental and many more. North Star connected a Blodgett BTC 102 combi oven, HVH 100 Hydrovection convection oven and two stacked WOW conveyor ovens to our test kitchens built-in utility distribution system to provide a fully-functioning cooking line, which produced all the food samples needed for the event. North Star also provided “Asphalt 2”, their mobile demonstration kitchen as back up cooking support. Chef Troy Mahoney and principle owner Todd Anderson were on site along with other North Star reps to ensure the equipment production side of this event went off without a hitch.

General Parts appreciates it partnership with the Minnesota foodservice community. A vital part of our community are our school districts. We are grateful to be able to help them not only with foodservice equipment repair and installation services, but also in the form of advice or in today’s case providing a free meeting space.

For enquires regarding holding your foodservice equipment related event at General Parts Group’s foodservice kitchen training center, please contact Minneapolis Branch Manager, Rick Cotes RickC@GeneralParts.com, or Business Development Manager Chuck Knuth chuckk@generalparts.com.