John Fowler (left), Austin Division president of US Foods and Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the company’s new distribution facility in Buda. (Photo by Cyndy Slovak-Barton)
by WES FERGUSON
Years ago, Al Swanson, the chief financial officer of US Foods, paid a visit to his company’s distribution facility in Austin.
It was old and cramped, not sufficient for the thousands of products distributed to restaurants, schools and other customers throughout Central and South Texas.
“If you see what people are doing with this facility,” he said, “what can they do with a real facility?”
Swanson and the rest of Illinois-based US Foods are about to find out. Last weekend, a long-delayed, $50 million project to move the operation from Austin to Buda reached its culmination with the grand opening of a massive new distribution facility on Firecracker Drive.
A tour of the company’s cavernous, climate-controlled facility revealed a number of unexpected features: bullet-proof glass on at least one window to maintain food safety, bright yellow bay doors that zip up and down with startling speed, a closet-like space where avocados and bananas are ripened with ethylene gas, a loading dock kept at 37 degrees and a cooler where ice cream stays fresh at negative 17 degrees.
“We can go down to minus 60 degrees,” said C.V. Belanger, vice president of operations.
Other facts about the Austin Division’s facility, provided by US Foods:
• The 305,000-square-foot facility sits on 42 acres in Buda and includes 34 loading docks; 54,000 square feet of freezer space; 39,000 square feet of refrigerated space; and 74,000 square feet of dry space.
• The division employs about 270 local employees, with a projected increase to 405 over the next five years.
• US Foods Austin distributes food and related products to more than 2,500 customers in South and Central Texas, including restaurants, hospitals, hotels, schools and governmental institutions.
• The new facility has capacity for 12,500 types of products.
• US Foods Austin will be the company’s first distribution facility to achieve LEED certification, an internationally recognized green building designation.
To mark the grand opening, US Foods also donated nearly 5,000 pounds of food to the Hays County Food Bank.
