Rob Beckley, Sales Manager, Foxx Equipment

Will you perhaps give us a quick overview of where Foxx Equipment stands today?

Foxx Equipment is a distributor of beverage dispensing equipment. We work in all beverage industries, and we’re experts at anything that moves liquid from one place to another. We’re involved in that process, which could be as simple as going from a keg of beer to a glass, from a bag-in-the-box soda system to a cup, or moving wort from one tank to another for a brewery, for instance.

What would you say have been the keys to the success of the company in the last years?

We’re a very small company, and our location in the Midwest gave us an opportunity when the beverage industry started to boom, especially on the beer side. We had an opportunity to reach out to many new customers.

And one thing that we’re really good at is customer service. People like working with us, and we are able to turn orders quickly. When customers needed something, we usually got it out the same day or the next day. We had a really good process of getting equipment out the door. Because we worked with so many different industries as far as beverages go, we could be a one-stop shop so they could buy equipment for beer or soda, order all different items, and have their CO2 systems fixed.

We’ve constantly expanded our product line as the times have changed. So, we’ve been able to grow as our customers have grown, and we listen to them. They say, “Hey, you should carry this.” So, we figure if one brewery is using something than another brewery, or if Coca-Cola is using it in North Carolina, they’re probably using it all over the country. So, we would bring new items in relatively easily.

Working with your peers in the industry, I have noticed that there is a lot of innovation in this area. Many companies from wineries and maybe beer manufacturers are now working on non-alcoholic beverages, and they’re popping up all over America. It’s quite interesting. There are a lot of different brands now, and everybody is trying to be a bit tough here. 

A lot of those industries cross over, and they use the same equipment, maybe a little bit different with a fitting or two. So, we’re able to cross over pretty easily, too, because beer equipment used to be for just beer and soda equipment for soda. Well, coffee and tea, all the different seltzer drinks, and the different types of drinks, equipment is a crossover, and as long as you follow a few simple rules, you can use that same equipment for multiple applications.

Do you also help clients who need a little bit of engineering to plan their facilities and so on?

Yeah, moving liquid from one place to another is basic physics. You have to apply pressure, and that pressure has to be able to move it to the other area. In the case of dispensing, you have to be able to move something. Beer, for instance, is manufactured at a certain certain carbonation level when it’s kegged. The best pour to come out of that keg has to match how the keg was kegged initially. So, if you just pour it directly out of the keg or you pour it a hundred feet down the way through a beer tower, you have to apply the science to make sure that whatever pressure you push that keg at, it is equalized throughout the system. When it pours, it pours exactly how it’s supposed to so that when it’s delivered to the customer, it’s how it’s supposed to taste. It’s supposed to be at the correct temperature. And there’s not a lot of waste because that’s where they make their money. The least amount of waste is from these products, the better it is for everybody. 

We can guide people through the process. If the system’s not working, we check the temperature, we check the pressure, and we’ll check some variable factors to see why it’s not pouring the way it’s supposed to. We work through the process until we figure out what’s going on. And sometimes, the system’s good. The apparatus is getting the liquid out of whether it’s the keg or the box. There’s an issue with that.

Once you work through the system a few times, it becomes second nature. You always ask the same questions, though. As we get into different types of liquids, whether it’s coffee, tea, or seltzer, they all have the same base. When they pour into a glass, they’re supposed to taste a certain way. It’s our job to help our customers pour it that way.

Understood. Are there any items from the current portfolio or innovations that you would like to highlight?

There are innovations. The towers are always improving. Beer towers are always getting better. The material that things are manufactured with are always getting better. For instance, when I started 15 years ago in the beer industry, most of the parts and pieces were chrome-plated brass. Chrome-plated brass, over time, the coating comes apart so that it could end up in the liquid, and you have to replace it. Most people are starting to move towards 304 or 316 stainless steel. So, our goal is eventually to move out of the chrome-plated business and just offer everything in stainless steel.

Then, the tubing that the product transfers through or the hoses keep improving as we go through. When you have two different drinks, and they’re flowing together in tubes next to each other, you don’t want a transfer of taste to go from one tube to the other. We’ll keep it simple. If you have Coke, and you have Pepsi, and they’re pouring, you want to make sure your Pepsi tastes like Pepsi, and your Coke takes like Coke that there’s no blend of flavors. So, the tubing has gotten better as the years have gone by.

There are also always improvements in refrigeration, in how cold things can be kept, in how strong a chill plate or a chiller is, or in the refrigeration apparatus itself. They’re constantly getting better.

Innovations exist to create less waste. They change so often that they might just be improvements on existing equipment. They have what we call foam preventers. It’s just a simple apparatus that shuts off when a keg is empty. You’ve seen it at a bar someplace when they go to pour a beer, and the keg empties all of a sudden, foam shoots out, and it gets all over the place and creates a mess. Well, that is CO2 pushing through the tube and pushing all the foam out and just blowing out CO2.

Well, that means when you go to fill that keg, you’ve got to fill that line, which is full of CO2. So, it’s going to be foamy. The FOB (foam on beer) shuts the line down with the product still in the line and allows you to bleed the product through. So, when you change that keg, it doesn’t shoot foam all over the place. It doesn’t waste any beer, and it saves you all the line space. It’s an item that actually pays for itself in maybe 2 to 3 months. 

We’re seeing that more and more people are using them, but it was never put in the industry. It used to be just a little plastic piece. But there are now innovations on that side, and more vendors are coming up with improvements to make the process easier, make them stronger, and last longer. So, that’s kind of what the industry is doing. The procedure is very basic, and it’s not going to change. It’s improving all the elements through that procedure that are getting better.

And education is a big thing. For instance, brewers know how to make beer, and their goal is to make it taste good and have all the correct flavors, all the smells, and everything you have with the beer. They don’t have any idea how to get it from one place to the other correctly so that when they serve that beer, the customer is getting what they really want. We help them and educate them in that aspect.

One of the top things that we also try to push is keeping your liquid lines clean. The Brewers’ Association has guidelines for breweries and for keeping beer lines clean, but it doesn’t matter if it’s soda or coffee. Those lines are constantly used. There’s matter in the beer and the coffee that eventually doesn’t make its way through the line. If you don’t clean it and clear all that matter out, it creates bad pores and bad taste. And eventually, if somebody’s trying something for the first time, and it’s a dirty line, they may never drink that that product again. 

So, they’re also improving what they clean the lines with. They usually work together with a caustic and an acid. But now they’re coming up with safer products that are more friendly to the environment. And if, for any reason, this product is left in the line and somebody accidentally drinks it, it won’t be as harmful. There have been people who have been severely injured or even passed away because of bad chemicals in the cleaning process. So, we stress cleaning, and we offer different programs. But we’re trying to push towards a greener, safer product.

Understood. It sounds like you’re not only a one-stop shop; you are much more than that. You can also repair it. You can improve it. You can also keep it clean and educate the clients on how to install state-of-the-art installations. 

We work with a lot of different people, and we ask our installers questions. We ask people questions, and that’s the only way we learn, and we share that information with other people.

What will you say are your competitive strengths in this very tough market? 

We are still a very small company in terms of the number of people we have, so we still offer a personal touch in the industry. And if you even talk to our vendors and our customers, customer service has always been a big deal with us. I’ve been in customer service and sales for a long time. I started with Coca-Cola when I was 22, and I learned right away that if you don’t provide the customer service needed, those products are available elsewhere.

You have to differentiate yourself. You have to create relationships. When somebody calls Foxx Equipment, they talk to a person. If we can’t help them right away, we’ll call them back so that they can talk to somebody who has some knowledge of the equipment.

We have several people who have been here for at least 20 years, some 15. Most of our guys have been here for at least 8 to 9 years on the sales side. So, we have a lot of experience with a lot of different things. We just get smarter, and we get more educated each year. I don’t care if you’ve been here 30 years or one year. There’s always something new. We always learn something new. We share it, and we’ll see something we’ve never seen in the market before.

That makes it fun and exciting. That’s the one thing we know we can control: what we do and how we talk to our customers. Supply chains change. You can’t help if a container falls into the sea while you are shipping something and you lose the product. We can’t control that, but we can control how customers react to us.

What will be your key message for potential clients?

The key message is I know a lot, and my competition knows a lot. Listen to what everybody has to say. Take as much information as you can. Don’t make any assumptions, and prove the value you can offer. We’re going to give you more than just parts. We’re going to create value behind that because our goal is a continual relationship. We do not want to look at it as a customer-vendor relationship. We want to look at them as partners. That’s the goal that we want to achieve, as we want to be partners with our customers.

Many of the companies I have the pleasure of interviewing, especially in the wine business, are now managed by the third or fourth generation, so I bet they appreciate somebody who can accompany them as they evolve.

Is there anything, Rob, that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to mention as well?

As Foxx Equipment goes, we were purchased recently from the Empire Group. It’s a conglomerate of different opportunities for different companies in the same restaurant business. We’re in the same business, but we’re at niche. The purchase of Foxx from Empire has given us more opportunities to grow in different areas than we had ever done before. We have more opportunities for new products than we ever had before. It’s given us a leg up on some more opportunities out there. So, Foxx from 2022 is going to be very different. And Fox 2025, as far as the opportunities for our customers to buy this product, we’re going to bring the same customer service and personal touch that we’ve brought through all the way, but with more opportunities for those relationships to grow.