YOUNGSTOWN For Tru-Temp, it's a booming market

Success in designing grocery stores has helped a local company expand from three employees to 17.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
YOUNGSTOWN -- For the guys at Tru-Temp Sales & amp; Service, a grocery store is a place of endless fascination.
Take meat display cases, for example. Shoppers may notice only the meat they hold, but Tru-Temp officials love to talk about the cases themselves.
Neal Eichorn, who heads design and engineering for the Andrews Avenue company, can explain how the cases are getting taller, with more shelves and wider shelves. Compressors in the cases are improving. Computers, of course, are everywhere.
"That's why I like this industry. It's exciting," he said.
Although not everyone would agree that meat cases are exciting, there's no doubt that grocery store equipment is a passion at Tru-Temp.
Expansion: It's this dedication that undoubtedly is behind the company's expansion in recent years. No longer just a supplier and repairer of refrigeration equipment, it now designs entire grocery stores.
When Glenn Griswold bought the business in 1994, he had a secretary and a mechanic. Now, the company employs 17, including four at an office in Akron. Sales have increased 500 percent.
The company was founded in 1926 as Dieter Refrigeration and was operated by the Dieter family until 1994. Griswold, now company president, bought the refrigeration contracting part of the business from Richard Dieter, who sold his ice machine business to another local company.
Changing the focus of the refrigeration company got the growth started, said Griswold, who changed the name last year.
Dieter had focused on serving convenience stores. Once Griswold started working with grocery stores, demand for his company's services exploded.
"The growth almost took on a life of its own," he said.
Employees: Griswold, who has a mechanical engineering degree from Youngstown State University, previously had worked with Store Systems and Service in Youngstown, which did similar work. Once his company started growing, he brought over other Store employees, including Eichorn and Jim Ferruchie, who is Tru-Temp's sales manager.
As his executive team fell into place, Griswold was moving the company beyond being an equipment supplier and repairer.
Tru-Temp now has about half of its business in designing new grocery stores and remodeling projects.
A store owner who wants to build new or remodel comes to Tru-Temp with a layout and what he wants to accomplish in that space.
Tru-Temp takes it from there, designing the store with checkout lanes, food aisles and electrical plans. It supplies all of the shelving and equipment, but it also helps store owners find ways to boost sales in certain areas of their stores.
Its refrigeration work also is expanding. Tru-Temp handles refrigeration service for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the region, and it has done heating, ventilating and air-conditioning work for banks and other businesses.
Its main focus, however, is on independent and small-chain grocery stores. It works in an area from Wooster to Western Pennsylvania and from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.
Smaller stores close: A consolidation in the grocery store industry has led to the closing of some smaller stores, but Ferruchie said Tru-Temp officials aren't worried about having enough business.
Smaller stores that provide a personal touch always will have a place, he said. The ones that survive will be the ones that understand they have to upgrade every seven years or so, which means business for Tru-Temp.
"We plan to work with the stronger ones in town because they'll be there through the Giant Eagles and supercenters," Ferruchie said.
Griswold said he thinks the company can grow by 25 percent to 30 percent in the region it now operates.
Its refrigeration service business is confined to that area because stores with refrigeration problems need quick service.
The design service can be done anywhere, but Griswold said he doesn't have plans to push for growth in other regions. The company, however, has done some design work in eastern Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Ferruchie said the company officials have a passion for this work because of their commitment to helping store owners.
Saving time: These owners often don't have the time to keep up on the latest trends in store equipment and design. By keeping up with these trends, Tru-Temp can offer the store owners a total solution for their problem, not just a piece of equipment, Ferruchie said.
"There's a science to it," he said. "When you walk into a store, you don't even notice it, but there's a lot of work involved."
shilling@vindy.com