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"It has been a lot of hard work over the last 10 years building this business to where it is to- day, and if the two of us hadn't been able to do it side-by-side, I don't know if we ever could have done it alone," said Tushman. Added Ishbia, "Our mission, when we formed the partner- ship, was to be a full-service dis- tributor of all meat products to the marketplace. And by that, we not only are selling poultry and pork as we originally were, we have a full line of beef, sea food, and deli products." "We even sell a lot of the dry- goods," said Tushman, "that go into fast food restaurants, such as napkins, buckets for the chicken, mops and things like that." Tushman attributes the com- pany's rapid growth to good ser- vice and good pricing, but acknowledges it has also grown through acquisitions. In 1994, Sherwood Food Distributors took over A&W Foods, a major food distributor in Cleveland not af- filiated with the Livonia-based A&W restaurant chain. Where do the partners see Sherwood Food Distributors go- ing now? "We always have our eyes open looking for more ex- pansion," said Tushman. "We normally say that our main goal is to take what we have and make it run more efficiently. If an opportunity comes along, sometimes as a good business person you can't say no, you have to take advantage of it." Both partners credit their em- ployees in the company's growth, with many having been with the two firms 20-25 years or more. Ishbia said Sherwood Food Distributors is "very fortunate to have a second generation working in the company as well. Larry has a son, Lee, who is in- volved in the sales department; and I have three sons, Howard, Jason and Joel, in various as- pects of the business. And Alex Karp also has his son Gary here. So we actually have five second- generation family members in training. "We have each of these young people in jobs that we feel are very important to the success of the company," he said. With a sales office in Atlanta, the company is looking at the southern market. The company covers the East Coast, from New York to Florida, via their Cincin- nati warehouse. "We purchase our meats and poultry all from the manufac- turers, from the slaughterhous- es. Everything is brought into our warehouses. Today, every- thing is in a boxed state. There are no more hanging carcasses," said Ishbia. The only processing done by the firm is at its Kalamazoo fa- cility, where it cuts up about 150,000 pounds of poultry per week. Sherwood also is a major dis- tributor of processed meats, buy- ing various brands from local manufacturers like Thorn Ap- ple Valley and Hygrade. Every day they receive between 100,000 to 120,000 boxes of meat in their Detroit ware- house, with the weight per box averaging 50 pounds. "Because there's a lot of corn- petition out there today, you have to be competitive," said Tushman. "I believe our buyers are some of the finest in the in- dustry today. Many of our peo- ple have been in the meat industry for their whole lives. "We have several who owned their own businesses at one time. When they closed up, they came to work for us, bringing their specialized knowledge with them." Joel Dorfman, president of Southfield-based Thorn Apple Valley, Inc., said Sherwood Food Distributors is "certainly one of the most successful distributors of poultry products in south- eastern Michigan and northern Ohio, their principal markets." Sherwood has 25 sales asso- ciates in Detroit, and can deliv- er a full meat order within 24 hours. To meet that turnaround time, the company processes all of its orders at night, with the goal of having all their trucks on the road by 8 a.m. "We start dispatching trucks from about midnight on," said Ishbia. Na- tionally, Sherwood maintains a fleet of 150 trucks. "I don't know if our business is the meat business or the lo- gistics business," said Ishbia. "We are a 24-hour business, open around the clock." Over the last 12 months, the company spent in excess of $1.5 million to expand and renovate its Detroit headquarters and warehouse. Office space was doubled to 16,000 square feet and property across the street was purchased to enlarge the parking area. Warehouse rack- ing was increased by 70 percent, along with the refrigeration of an additional area within the warehouse and the replacement of floors and lighting. The temperature in the ware- house is kept at a steady 30 degrees, except for a colder area where some frozen products are stored. And there are back- up compressors in case of a pow- er failure. It is one of the few places in metro Detroit where you can see men wearing fur parkas comfortably on a 90-de- gree day. ❑