Stacey Landfield, Manning Brothers

During a career that spans more than 35 years, Stacey Landfield has worked as a caterer, a foodservice director and more. Six years ago, Landfield signed on at Manning Brothers, serving customers in Kentucky for the Georgia-based dealership. While Landfield takes immense pride in working with school districts throughout the Bluegrass State, she works with restaurants, too. In fact, she’s helping a James Beard Award finalist develop a new concept. “They think they might want to franchise this concept and they are bringing me in on the ground floor, which is great,” she says.

Landfield combines her years of experience with an ever-developing knowledge base and a passion for the industry to continue to grow and evolve.

Q: How does your experience as a foodservice director, caterer, etc. help you better serve your customers?

A: When I was a foodservice director at the University of Kentucky, we had all kinds of restaurants. We had a quick service restaurant. We had an all-you-care-to-eat operation. We had a pizza concept, too. Working with a variety of operations taught me to be creative. For example, I learned how to use ingredients that are interchangeable on the menu. And I can leverage that kind of experience when my customers turn to me for advice.

Q: How has the way you go to market evolved in recent years?

A: Within the last year or so we created a website — staceyschoolsolutions.com. It lists many of the manufacturers we work with, a link to our buying group website, pictures of the projects we have completed and more. I can send my customers there to show them what we’ve done and whom we work with before coming to visit them. This has allowed me to win a lot of new customers this year alone.

Q: With so many products on the market these days, how do you keep your knowledge base current?

A: The training and the traveling that we do is so important. Manning Brothers President Chuck Day is a huge supporter of attending training events. I am twice the salesperson I was five years ago because of Chuck. Training events hosted by SEFA, our buying group, are 99% of how we keep up with everything. Their training is amazing. We have four people on my team in Kentucky and we go to every SEFA training event. We also get to attend larger industry events like The NAFEM Show. Chuck also supports our attending factory training events. I went once to visit an oven manufacturer’s plant in Italy, which was really insightful. This stuff does not just pop into your head. You have to go to these events to learn.

Q: What’s one thing that brings you satisfaction in your role?

A: The remodeling of the cafeterias, by far, is my greatest joy. Seeing the students faces when they come in and get their first look at the new layout, including the newly painted walls, the picture of the mascot on the wall and more is amazing. And it increases participation. Adding something like new cafeteria furniture can get the students to eat more in the cafeteria and that’s the goal at the end of the day.

DSR 3-2-1

Stacey Landfield, Manning Brothers, sits down with Jason Wange, Foodservice Powerplant Network, to talk about being named an FE&S DSR of the Month. Foodservice Equipment & Supplies Presents DSR 3-2-1 is sponsored by Salvajor.

Find more episodes of DSR 3-2-1 here.

Foodservice Equipment & Supplies Presents DSR 3-2-1 is sponsored by Salvajor.