Zena Dater takes a seat in one of the comfy booths at Toby Keith’s restaurant in Oklahoma City, one of her clients.  Photos by Andrew Yates

In describing Dater, it would be easy to employ such clichés as “larger than life” and “smile that brightens up the room.” But doing so would be too limiting. How does one skip the overused phrase: charismatic and charming, when trying to accurately summarize all of those characteristics that make FE&S' 2008 DSR of the Year successful?

That's it! “Warrior princess,” like Xena Warrior Princess, to which Dater's friends jokingly refer. Dater would laugh loudly at the reference to the hit television series actress, especially since the actress looks like a ferocious Amazonian, and Dater is elegant and classy.

But “warrior” is precisely the right word here because Dater goes beyond the beaten path of most DSRs, figuratively, in her tendency to “fight” for her customers through thick and thin, and literally, given her national portfolio of 300 accounts spanning the United States from Florida to California. Dater also redefines what it means to be a successful, respected and widely-liked woman in a male-dominated industry, and in a male-dominated profession. She accomplishes all of this without compromising her classic beauty and sense of elegance. Dater's affinity for good food, good wine and the finer things in life allows her to move effortlessly through the industry's upper crust, and yet she always seems so well grounded.

When asked to describe herself and what she does, Dater says, “I sell stuff” followed by a loud laugh, touching off a reoccurring joke. The “I sell stuff” comment is also the understatement of the century. Last year, Dater raked in $6 million in sales and this year, she's on track to make $8 million. Yeah, she sells “stuff” alright.

But that's precisely the joke. Dater's DSR title may indicate she's in sales, yet it never seems like she's really selling anything. What she sells is her trust, her company and ultimately, herself.

“It's more like building friendships, it's not hard sales,” Dater says.

This is evident by the interaction between Dater and her clients, which include mainly chain restaurants and the occasional independent. With each client visit, it truly seems like she's simply meeting with friends. Dater never even uses the front door, entering her clients' operations through the kitchens' back entrance. And in the case of startup projects, she chats up the engineer or construction crews before making her way to her clients. The construction crews make up just as integral a part of the restaurants she helps out as the managers and execs who run them.

Dater peruses the Oswalt catalog with Ross Crain, proprietor and general manager of Toby Keith’s restaurant, named after the popular country singer who played anintegral role in the development of the restaurant. A fully equipped stage pictured here allows country bands and singers to perform live at the restaurant.

“I guess I had the 7½-year itch,” she says with a laugh. “Thank God I didn't have that with Oswalt!”

Company President Jim Oswalt took a chance when he hired Dater 13 years ago, she says. “I had no sales experience at all, I was an operations person.”

Dater was tired of the long hours associated with being an operator and wanted to spend more time with her family. She has two daughters, now 18 and 29, one granddaughter and one grandson. “Having a close family and quality of life was much more important to me than money,” she says.

So, Dater called Oswalt, from whom she used to buy equipment and supplies for her restaurants, and asked to meet with him.

“Zena walked in the door wanting to work for us, and she had only a little sales experience, yet she wanted to go straight into sales,” Oswalt recalls. Dater mentions having six to eight months of sales experience with U.S. Foodservice.

That meeting itself turned out to be an important sales call because at that moment, she sold herself to Oswalt. After a few months on the job as the first female salesperson at the dealership, Oswalt says, Dater “was a natural at it.

“Zena knows how to break the ice with customers and she's always fighting for her customer,” Oswalt says. “She's been very successful in her role, and she has more freedom than many others in the industry.”

Dater easily breaks the ice with strangers, particularly when she meets them in person for the first time. She immediately greets others with a wide smile, revealing her super white teeth, followed by some lighthearted conversation. Dater makes you feel instantly comfortable, like you have already known her for years.

Dater starts many of her days by checking e-mail at around 6:30 a.m. and spending a few hours catching up on other work-related tasks before hitting the road to visit her many customers in the areas surrounding Oklahoma City. Twice a month she'll get on an airplane to visit clients and Dater flies to all customer restaurant openings anywhere in the country.

“My day is a little psycho,” Dater says, chuckling. “I don't just work from 9 to 5. Sometimes I get calls at 3 a.m. if equipment goes down or something goes wrong. But what I try to do then is just say I'll take care of it to calm them down. I try to take the stress off the clients' chest and put it on mine.”

Aside from her new company car and the stack of equipment catalogs that fill the back, Dater's cell phone is her biggest tool. One day with the phone's ringer broken and her e-mail functions slowing down, she exclaimed, “I need the new iPhone!” As a result of the malfunctioning, her voice mailbox and e-mail inbox quickly filled up by midday. Despite staying up until 2 a.m. returning calls and e-mail messages, Dater promptly makes her next morning appointment looking perky and ready to go, even without the benefits of caffeine.

Given her extensive client focus, Dater's rarely in the office. Nevertheless, the closeness she has with everyone in the office is apparent by their many shared phone calls during the day and the good-natured jokes Dater exchanges with co-workers as she walks through the dealership's facilities.

Upon entering the office Dater first encounters John Imes, design/build manager, who she greets with a hug. During the course of the conversation she refers to him as her “savior” thanks to all the bid work and contract proposal work he does in Dater's pursuit of new business. Later, when Jeff Martin, part owner and vice president, shows up she pokes fun at him for being “late,” certainly a rarity for Martin, whom Dater later describes as one of the nicest people she knows, and funniest with his sarcastic humor. She also calls Huff Harper, part owner and director of operations, one of the smartest people she knows, even though everyone at Oswalt is brilliant in her eyes, including Dick Muehieisen, another owner and the company's chief financial officer. Later, Harper says, “Zena has a high standard of expectation not only for herself but also for her company, and that makes everyone better. That demand to be the best really helps us out.”

She stops by close friend Lindsay Keene, project manager, to talk excitedly about their plans to attend an upcoming conference together. “Zena doesn't just do business with her customers, she does life,” Keene says. “She goes to their weddings, birthday parties, you name it.”

Later, during an episode of playful banter in the office, someone kids about putting duct tape around Dater's mouth. It's true that Dater is a talker, but equally as important she listens just as intensely.

The joking and laughing throughout the Oswalt office begins to sound more like close friends or even siblings interacting. “Going to work is not like going to work every day,” Dater says. “We're like family here.”

At the back of Oswalt Restaurant Supply sits the dealership's warehouse and extensive service department. In addition, the service department does heating/cooling and HVAC installation and maintenance. What helps, too, is when the service department gains new clients, they can pass them to Dater for equipment supply service, and vice versa. And, if something does go wrong, she says both teams can work quickly and easily together to fix the problem.

“Not everyone can provide hands-on service like we try to do,” Dater says. “We go out to new projects early, even when the ground is still muddy.” As a result, Dater has sought to build trust and companionship not just with her operator customers and restaurant staff, but also entire construction crews. “I've been able to make enough friends with general contractors so for example, if there's a problem with field dimensions during construction, I don't have to fly out to the site just to retake measurements and work with the team. I've been able just to call the general contractor and he'll be nice enough to take a measurement for me and tell me what it is.” In addition, Dater says, she's been able to get better pricing for her customers as a result of her teamwork with construction.

The Oswalt Restaurant Supply leaders: (left to right) Jeff Martin, Jim Oswalt, Zena Dater, Huff Harper and Dick Muehieisen.

Oswalt ranked 62nd in FE&S' 2008 Distribution Giants list, raking in about $15 million in sales last year, and Dater says at this point the company's doubled its numbers since the year prior. But Dater adds, “We don't want to grow too fast.”

Not all DSRs start on the operations side. Many come through architecture or design, or from sales careers in other industries. But it's precisely Dater's restaurant background that she says has shaped her current career.

“I would not be as successful if I had not gone through the ranks in operations,” she says. “As a result of my background, I'm very aware and knowledgeable about my customers' needs because I've been there.”

After joining Oswalt, Dater vowed to be a different kind of salesperson right away. “When I worked in operations, I couldn't stand the salespeople that came into the restaurant trying to sell me this and that,” she says. “They were more like pests. I didn't want to be a pest with my clients.” Instead, she's been more of a close partner, helping her chain accounts build new stores, and assisting them in every way possible, from the design, to the construction, installation, and follow-up that lasts, well forever.

Also as a result of her operations background, Dater has an uncanny knowledge of smallwares in addition to just heavy-duty cooking equipment. “Smallwares used to account for about 90 percent of my sales, now it's split more evenly between smallwares and heavy equipment,” she says. Often, during conversations with her clients, she rattles off specs and products with absolute ease, and knows exactly which ones would work for that particular customer.

While sitting in her office at one of the Carino's Italian Grill restaurants, Dickinson tells a story about how Dater helped her deal with the often confusing task of sorting through boxes of smallwares for a new restaurant opening.

“I had like 400 boxes of smallwares that came in when we opened this restaurant and Zena showed up and walked me through every single box, every single piece,” she says. “Together, we sorted through all the boxes and made sure I had everything.” At one point, Dickinson adds, a particular item didn't look right to Dater. As a result, Dater called the Oswalt office to order new shipments and helped Dickinson process all the returns. “She has helped me so much,” says Dickinson, who runs nine Johnny Carino's stores as the director of operations.

As a result of her work with Dickinson and others associated with Johnny Carino's, Dater supplies to all of the chain's units, which span Oklahoma and outside of the state into Texas, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, California and other states. She also has picked up the 25-unit Rudy's Bar-B-Que chain, which is run by Lynn Ford, wife of Creed Ford, who is the co-founder of Fired Up, parent company to Rudy's and Carino's, along with co-founder Norman Abdallah, former Brinker execs.

As the professional relationship between Dater and Dickinson evolved, so did a personal one, with the two becoming best friends outside of work. One of their common bonds appears to be their passion for the foodservice industry. Dater jokes even when away from the office they're still discussing work over a couple glasses of good pinot noir, another shared interest.

“When Zena showed up at the restaurant with a manufacturer I knew, I had absolutely no interest in working with Oswalt at that time,” Dickinson says, noting she was already set in other supply contracts. But Dater's instant likability made her memorable in Dickinson's mind. Later, during a restaurant opening, when she was facing major problems with her equipment supply company, Dickinson thought about Dater and put her to the task instead. “Within two days, Zena had the entire restaurant up and running.

“She could sell ice to an Eskimo,” Dickinson adds with a smile, “and get you to like it. Bottom line, a piece of equipment is a piece of equipment, so it's more about the service. Zena's always asking, 'Are you happy with this,' and if not she suggests, 'Maybe we can do it this way.' I know she has my best interest at heart.”

Dater's super comfortable and friendly interactions with clients are apparent during a visit with the corporate dining cafeteria at the headquarters for Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the largest natural gas producers in the United States. The 540,000-square-foot area looks more like a college campus with buildings in the style of New England architecture that resemble residential homes more than offices. Just as elaborate, the cafeteria, which serves 2,400 employees, features multiple servery stations, and a modern, sleek interior and “green” focus. Dater casually chats about the needs for the salad bar with Jon Biegel while munching on chocolate chip raisin bread tested out that morning by one of the three executive chefs that head up the operation.

Later during a visit at J.R.'s Bar-B-Que, Area Director Ryan Springer instantly cracks jokes with Dater while sitting with her at one of the hi-top tables in the bar. Framed photos of wrestlers and their uniforms serve as the backdrop while the two chat about the opening of this new Oklahoma City location, an offshoot of the Norman, Okla., original restaurant that was quickly outgrowing its space. J.R. stands for Jim Ross, recognized as one of the best wrestling announcers in history for the World Wrestling Federation (WFF).

“We invited Zena to our wedding, and didn't think she was coming until she showed up on the beach in Mexico by surprise,” Crain says. “That tells you a lot about what kind of person she is. We have a business relationship, but also a friendship.”

Dater says she rarely stops by restaurants to sell something; rather, “things come up.” In this visit, Crain asks Dater about menu covers for the restaurant and peruses the Oswalt catalog. During a call to the office, Dater arranges for the restaurant to receive a shipment of sample menu covers, recognizing right away what kind will work for Crain. In this case, it's a durable but sophisticated leather cover and laminated interior because of the high volume the restaurant generates through each day. Crain says the restaurant doesn't keep tab on the number of covers they do daily, but from a strong lunch and dinner business, they are on track to rake in $7 million this year and averaged $6 million for all three years of business. That's no surprise considering the 12,000-square-foot facility includes 450 seats and a fully equipped stage for live country bands. Crain says he decided to open up for lunch after crowds began swarming at the front door at 3 p.m. in anticipation of the evening's entertainment.

Dater's friendships with chefs doesn't end at Toby Keith's. At Redrock's patio overlooking the beautiful Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, Culinary Institute of America-trained chef Brad Johnson sits with Zena to chat and talk about the barramundi fish that's the day's special.

In fact, Dater has an extensive involvement with the culinary scene not only in Oklahoma City but in other states as well. As an associate director of the Oklahoma City Restaurant Association since 1990 and current chairman of the association's allied committee, she has helped develop the city's restaurant business, and spawned partnerships across restaurants. Dater helped both Crain and Dickinson get on the association's board of directors. She also works closely with Kurt Fleischfresser, another board member, Oswalt client, and executive chef/owner of The Coach House, a four-star, fine-dining French restaurant in Oklahoma City.

Dater's intrigue with the culinary world moved her to expand Oswalt's culinary smallwares area. But her involvement goes even one step further. What started as a mini “Iron Chef” competition between two chefs to liven up the Oswalt booth at the Oklahoma City Restaurant Association Show years back has now grown into a nationally recognized culinary competition with renowned chefs from Oklahoma competing for a purse of $3,000. Last year, the “Oswalt Culinary Cookoff and Ice Carving” featured 12 up-and-coming chefs, including celebrity MC Andrew Alexander, the former chef for the Food Network's popular show, “Al Roker on the Road,” and celebrity chef-judge Charles Clark of Ibiza Food and Wine Bar in Houston who once competed against Mario Batalli on the Food Network's Iron Chef America.

The competition also included eight ice carvers, and raised $11,000 for the event. Oswalt even set up fully equipped, separate mini-kitchens, one for each chef in the competition spanning the 14 booths designated for the culinary competition. An extensive amount of work goes into the project, with nine-person team meetings beginning as far back as a year before the event.

“My initial intention was to draw attention to Oswalt but it's become much more than that,” Dater says. “I am so passionate about it.”

Next year, the competition will again take place at the Oklahoma Restaurant Show, but the show was moved to August. The winner of that competition will compete in the National Restaurant Association Restaurant Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago during May 2010.

Outgoing and social, Dater is a natural when it comes to networking, something she makes a continual effort in order to get new business. “To be a good salesperson you have to be patient,” she says, referring to times where she may contact a potential restaurant client who currently uses another dealership. One such example of a client Dater won over time is Braum's, a regional ice cream chain and dairy supplier. It took Dater five years to get their business, but that persistence has led to her working with the chain's more than 100 units. “If I get turned down, I'm actually glad, because that shows they're being loyal to their dealer, and I would want someone to be just as loyal to me. I usually say to them, 'I appreciate your loyalty, and here's my card, and call me if you need anything.' Then I put it on my calendar to touch base once every three months or so. After that it's all about being in the right place at the right time.”

Following that line of thought, Dater shares a story of securing business with Old Chicago, a national chain operated by Louisville, Colo.-based Rock Bottom Restaurants. While in Denver for a golf tournament, Dater made an appointment with one of the Old Chicago executives who had given her the lead for the Oklahoma City franchise unit. She met with them only a couple days after a competitor and friend sent in a team of salespeople to solicit business with the chain.

“We talked about our background, families and everything but business, only at the end of the meeting did we get into that. I said to him, 'We're probably not going to be the cheapest, and we will make mistakes,' which is something he didn't expect to hear. But, I said to him, 'I will give you my word to address those mistakes in a timely manner that won't affect your business, and I'll be a phone call away all the time,'” Dater says. “I think he appreciated my honesty and that I didn't make a bunch of promises,” something, she adds, her competition had done a couple days before. The next day Dater got the call with the OK to take over the job. Afterward, she says, even her competitor-friend called up to congratulate her.

This is the way Dater proactively tries to build her client portfolio. “If I go to a city for something else and really like it, I will research the restaurants there and send an e-mail to a contact to introduce myself and offer my business,” she says. “Sometimes, I'll set up four or five other appointments before flying to a city to see one person.” Locally, she'll keep her eyes open for construction sites and new restaurant opening signs.

In addition to her involvement with the Oklahoma City Restaurant Association, Dater praises SEFA, the buying group to which Oswalt belongs, for offering countless other networking opportunities within the industry. “It's great to network between manufacturers and dealers, and share what you do in your organization.”

Dater discusses business with Chef Kurt Fleischfresser, chef/owner of The Coach House, a four-star, fine-dining French-inspired restaurant in Oklahoma City.

After decades of living in the United States, it hadn't been necessary for Dater to go for her citizenship until well into her adult life, after having children. But after “staying up all night studying the Constitution's Preamble and everything you need to know about the history and government of the United States,” she passed her exam and became a citizen in 1990.

Still, Dater's as American as you can get, and especially when she talks about her love of baseball and sports. “There's a reason why I married my husband — because he looks like a baseball player,” later talking multiple times about being happily married to Steve for 22 years.

“My dream in life before I die is to visit every baseball stadium in the U.S.,” says Dater, adding that her daughter, Kylie, has the same wish.

Dater's attachment to her city can be seen while talking about the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that claimed the lives of 168 people. The site remains an epicenter of heavy emotion. Passing by in Dater's car, one could see the flowers, notes and momentos piled up at the foot of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, a solemn yet peaceful area with a “reflecting pool,” bounded by twin bronze gates.

When the bombing happened, Dater was at La Roca where the windows shattered and Jim Oswalt said they could hear it in the office as it shook slightly. “After that happened, all the restaurants and the entire industry pulled together to help each other out,” Dater says. “We set up a makeshift cafeteria for the emergency workers since we had to find a way to feed everyone. The community came together like nothing I had ever seen.”

Since then, Oklahoma City has come a long way, Dater says. From an outsider perspective, perhaps little does she realize she had a direct hand in helping to build the sprawling city's restaurant business. Now, FE&S recognizes her for helping to build the foodservice industry as a whole, but also by serving as a role model for other industry members.