A lot can change in 148 years.
When Curtze Food Service got its start, deliveries went out by horse-drawn carriage. The company supplied businesses like lumber camps, construction companies, and oil companies with everything from flour by the barrel to gunpowder.
Today, Ethan Sykes, Director of Foodservice Equipment, is helping restaurant operators design kitchens, test equipment with their own food, and find new technology that can make their operations more efficient.
The tools have changed quite a bit. The idea of being there when customers need you really hasn’t.
Curtze has remained family-owned throughout its nearly 150-year history. Founded by Charles August Curtze, the company is now led by his great-great-grandson, President Bruce Kern II. Fourth and fifth generations are involved in the business today, and a sixth generation is already in the building.
By the middle of the 20th century, Curtze had shifted its focus toward restaurants, and acquisitions in the late 1990s expanded the company into areas including meat processing and foodservice equipment.
Today, Curtze’s approach is all-encompassing. Food, equipment, janitorial and sanitation products, disposables, and other everyday needs all come together under one relationship.
But Ethan believes the real difference is how close that relationship gets.
With roughly 200 sales representatives, many Curtze customers see their rep in person every week. They’re in the kitchens, know the operators and their teams, and understand what’s happening inside each individual business.
Over time, Ethan says, they almost become part of the customer’s team.
That proximity also creates accountability. Curtze isn’t delivering equipment, sending an invoice, and disappearing. The team will be back the following week delivering steaks, mops, or whatever else that operation needs.
Ethan wants to be someone a customer calls when there’s a problem, even when buying something new isn’t the answer.
Sometimes an operator asks whether a failing piece of equipment should be repaired or replaced, and Ethan will tell them to repair it and invest the money somewhere else. He’s also a big advocate for things like oil filtration, even though helping a restaurant extend the life of its oil may ultimately mean Curtze sells less of it.
For Ethan, that’s an easy decision.
“If it’s better for the customer, it’s better for us.”
That same philosophy carries into the equipment side of his role.
Ethan spends a lot of time on kitchen layouts and specifications, and he describes part of his job as being a translator. Operators usually know what they’re trying to accomplish, but they may not know what equipment or solutions are available to get them there.
His job is to bridge that gap, and sometimes the solution isn’t adding anything at all. It’s figuring out how to get more out of what the operator already has.
One project Ethan is especially proud of involved a convenience store chain and an existing cooler. Using a new shelving system, they redesigned the space and increased its storage capacity by about 20% without increasing the footprint.
That project reflects a philosophy Ethan brings to other areas of design as well: given the physical constraints of a space, how can you get the maximum utility out of it?
In bar design, that can mean what he calls a “zero-step philosophy,” placing the things employees use most within reach. Taking two or three extra steps doesn’t seem like much once. Multiply that by every employee, every task, and every shift, and those steps start costing real time.
It’s also why Ethan wants operators thinking about the less glamorous details early.
Where are the drains? Is the right power available? Is there enough gas capacity for future expansion? He even tries to specify equipment with casters whenever possible. If equipment can’t easily be moved, it’s harder to clean, maintain, service, and eventually replace.
Those details aren’t nearly as exciting as choosing the equipment itself, but getting them wrong can be expensive.
Whenever possible, Ethan also wants customers to experience the equipment before making a decision.
Curtze has access to a large network of test kitchens, allowing operators to bring in the food they’ll actually be serving and cook it on equipment they’re considering. They can taste the results, make adjustments, and even experiment with potential menu items.
For a restaurant that’s still in the planning stages, that can happen before they’ve even broken ground.
It takes some of the guesswork out of a major investment and gives the operator something much more useful than a spec sheet: real experience with the equipment.
Ethan’s own operations background is part of why he enjoys that process so much. About half of his time is spent in the office working with the Curtze team, learning about new products, and developing sales initiatives. The other half is spent in the field meeting with customers and working through active projects.
While Curtze doesn’t perform installations itself, the team often takes on a project management role depending on the job, helping head off confusion and provide guidance, particularly when newer equipment is involved.
Ethan intentionally tries to stay customer-facing.
Being in the field gives him direct feedback on what operators are actually dealing with and keeps his advice rooted in real operations. For someone who came from that side of the business, it’s also one of the things he enjoys most about his role.
“Getting to step back into that world through our customers is something I genuinely enjoy,” Ethan shared. “I consider it a privilege.”
As Curtze grows, the company is also looking at how technology can free its people up to spend more time doing exactly that.
Automation and a sophisticated CRM help manage things like follow-ups, reminders, and organization. Those small touches still need to happen, but they don’t necessarily require the expertise of a salesperson. The goal is to let technology handle more of the process so the team can spend its time on the problems where their knowledge actually adds value.
Technology is changing the customer’s side of the operation, too.
Ethan expects smart-kitchen equipment to become increasingly common. Fully robotic kitchens may not be around every corner, but features like automated timers and basket lifts are already helping operators improve consistency and accomplish more when staff or space is limited.
He also sees opportunities in takeout and delivery. Food lockers, for example, can allow a third-party driver to access only the order they’re picking up rather than sorting through multiple bags. That may sound like a small change, but every incorrect pickup can mean a remake, a credit, or an unhappy customer.
Some of these technologies are still expensive, but Ethan expects many of them to become more accessible over the next several years.
That’s one reason Curtze puts so much emphasis on staying current. The team regularly attends trade shows, training events, and conferences so that when something new can genuinely improve a customer’s kitchen or bar, they’re prepared to bring that knowledge back to the operator.
As Ethan put it, they don’t want to use solutions from ten years ago to solve today’s problems.
The same forward-thinking applies to how operators pay for those solutions.
Ethan believes one of the biggest misconceptions around financing is looking only at whether there’s enough cash available to purchase equipment outright.
For an operator, particularly one opening a new location, there are a lot of demands on that cash before the first meal is ever sold. Financing equipment that’s under warranty can provide more predictability around costs while leaving capital available for things like marketing, other revenue-generating investments, or simply additional flexibility as the business gets established.
For Ethan, financing isn’t about assuming one option is right for everyone. It’s about giving customers another way to look at the investment and decide what makes the most sense for their business.
That approach fits naturally with the way he talks about Curtze as a whole.
This is a company that started with horse-drawn carriages and barrels of flour and has spent nearly 150 years adapting to whatever its customers needed next.
Today, that may mean smart equipment, a better kitchen layout, an equipment demo, more flexible financing, or simply telling an operator that the piece of equipment they already have is worth repairing.
The solutions will keep changing.
For Ethan, the important part is staying close enough to the customer to know which one they actually need.