Why General Parts Group Values it’s CFESA Membership
The Commercial Food Equipment Service Association (CFESA) was created in 1963 as a trade association to represent professional service companies and parts distributors. To this day it is the only trade association that exclusively represents these industries. CFESA’s vision is to be the ‘standard of excellence’ for the service industry through training, education and active partnerships with foodservice equipment manufactures.
Impressed by the vision of CFESA and seeing great value in what could be achieved by realizing this vision General Parts Group joined the association in 1970. Since this time General Parts Group has been an active member, achieving ‘Certified Company’ status in 2001, the first company to do so. Company certification holds each member to a higher standard and requires a greater level of active participation. These higher standards include technician training, participation is speaking events, productive industry relationships, and measurable customer satisfaction programs. General Parts Group is proud to have achieved this certification and to have passed recertification every 3 years.
Perhaps the greatest value in the association with CFESA comes from the setting of industry standards. General Parts have always believed that its goal was to maintain or return equipment to its original manufactured state. This is strongly echoed by CFESA and has been instrumental in the creation of robust and measurable training standards. To further strengthen its commitment to training CFESA opened a purpose-built training center in 2015. Based in Fort Mill, South Carolina this facility hosts a wide variety of manufacturer training classes as well as CFESA technician certification training which complements General Parts Group’s own facilities in Phoenix, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Indianapolis.
CFESA and its members are also strong supporters of the use of O.E.M. parts. Not only does O.E.M. parts help fulfill our goal of returning equipment to its original manufactured state, but they also carry warranties that safeguard the end user and are manufactured to standards that help increase return on investment.
General Parts shows further commitment to CFESA through its President, Bruce Hodge. Bruce has donated his time by becoming a tutor at CFESA’s Management Training Classes. Leveraging over 45 years of experience, Bruce has developed a program of best practice behaviors that will benefit any manager working in the industry. This program’s goal is to ensure that CFESA not only delivers technicians of the future but also tomorrows leaders safeguarding our industry for years to come.
About General Parts Group
General Parts Group is a provider of Commercial Kitchen Equipment Repair Services. Founded in 1939, the company has grown to be a distributor of O.E.M. parts and provides service for over 60,000 customers and 400 manufacturers of commercial foodservice equipment. Corporate headquarters are located in Minneapolis, Minnesota and with major branch operations strategically located in Arizona(3), Colorado, Florida, Idaho(2), Illinois, Indiana(2), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri(2), Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma(2), Oregon(2), Tennessee, Texas(2) and Wisconsin(2), we are ideally positioned to provide Quality Service for over one third of the United States. We are viewed as the market leader in most of the markets we serve and in terms of overall sales, General Parts Group ranks in the top five of independent service companies nationally.