On a snowy January morning in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a flat-screen monitor in a former Mennonite elementary school displays the vital signs of WebstaurantStore, which, excepting produce, sells everything a restaurant might need, from $25,000 walk-in freezers to 15-cent takeout containers. Business is booming. By 9AM, WebstaurantStore, the Internet storefront of Clark Associates, a 53-year-old family-owned firm, has already rung up $800,000 in sales. It bagged $8.6 million the day prior.
In a former classroom nearby which still has a chalkboard on the wall, employees run demand projections to ensure Clark’s warehouses remain well-stocked with 35-pound buckets of peanut butter, boot-shaped beer mugs and the rest of the 420,000 products the website offers. It’s a struggle to keep up. Clark Associates’ sales have ballooned from $80 million in 2009 to $4 billion today — an eye-popping growth rate of 32% a year. Over the same period, employee head-count has gone from 350 to
