Corporate Headquarters
7900 South Route 31
Crystal Lake, IL 60014

For 50 years, A Commitment To Excellence

It was more than 50 years ago that Oren E. Klemm —described by his son Richard Klemm as a “risk taker” — tinkered his way to changing the face of foodservice.

In 1946, the elder Klemm founded a water filtration business in modest beginnings, a garage in suburban Chicago. In the late 1940s he pioneered the “HOT-SERVE” line of Food Warming and Conveying Cabinets that are known throughout the food service industry today as Heated Banquet Cabinets. Food Warming Equipment Company, now also known as FWE, marks its 50th anniversary of incorporation in 1953.

“He helped change the whole concept of mass feeding, but did it in an elegant manner,” Richard Klemm recalls. “Before Dad, when you went to a banquet, the head table would be finished eating before everyone else had been served their food.”

Like father, like son. Since 1972, Richard Klemm has run FWE as chief executive officer and chairman of the board, receiving four patents for his innovations, overseeing a manufacturing plant move as well as several expansions of the manufacturing facility and positioning the company for the next half century.

FWE, based in Crystal Lake, Ill., is an innovator in equipment for rethermalizing, cook-hold and transporting food either hot or cold, as well as portable bars. The company makes close to 500 models, including 68 different types of banquet carts with five unique heat systems, a much larger selection than the nearest competitor. Customers range from fine dining and hotel resorts to casual dining, QSR chain restaurants, schools and universities to the very demanding prison/penitentiary segments — and all operations in between.

Early Breakthroughs

While holding hot food and cold food outside of a kitchen's four walls hardly seems like breakthrough science today, the novelty of  FWE's early products cannot be overstated.

In 1954, Clyde Jennings, president of the Hotel Elton in Waterbury, Conn., wrote to FWE, “When I purchased one of your Hot-Serve Food Warming Cabinets last year, it was certainly an experiment from my point of view . . . The idea of getting 50 to 100 party dishes out of the way before regular luncheon or dinner service began would lessen the work at peak times.” He added that the chef was so delighted with the new addition to his kitchen that he actually “caressed” the stainless steel polish on the equipment and would highly recommend the concept. Richard Klemm remembers less emotional responses to early sales calls. “When we introduced refrigerators or freezers on wheels, customers would ask, ‘Why wheels?' It took some time for the concept of portable food cabinets to catch on.”

However, soon enough it did. Catering clients, such as North Shore Hotel — now a retirement hotel in Evanston, Ill. — purchased FWE hot holding cabinets for serving banquets in 1954 and 1955. The same equipment is still in use today, 49 years later! Few weddings, banquets, dinners or business lunches are served nationwide — or worldwide, for that matter, without mobile carts that keep food fresh and safe until the plates hit the table. Guests who get their food hot and at the same time as those at the host table have FWE to thank.

Teamwork and Technology

Even businesses that break ground need to continue to evolve, and FWE has done that, while sticking to its five-decade history of teamwork, customer service and value. As the economy has faltered and competition has increased in recent years, FWE has only become more nimble, says Jeff Brown, a foodservice consultant with Miami-based Inman Associates LLC.

“In the last decade, they have become something very special. I recommend their products to clients because other factories are asking, ‘How cheap can we make this?' and FWE asks, ‘How can we make this better? How can we make the project better?'” Brown says FWE's Crystal Lake, Ill., plant is among the most sophisticated he's seen in recent years, with a focus on automation for manufacturing parts, leaving human hands — and brains — for assembly, customization and customer service. It is a paperless factory, without the standard blueprints affixed to equipment, typical of many factories. Instead, computers keep the company's 95 employees connected and up to date. “They have taken profits and put them into state-of the- art equipment. You just do not see that level of commitment anymore,” Brown says.

Deron Lichte, vice president and chief operating officer of  FWE, says the investment has been in people as well as technology. Employees — from factory workers to salespeople to management — are treated as part of the same team. Inside sales reps are paid salaries, not commissions, so that there is no incentive to compete internally with one another. “There is a great deal of motivation in our culture to lend a hand and take ownership of opportunities or concerns at many different levels,” says Lichte. The company's low turnover (FWE has many employees who are celebrating 20- or 30-year anniversaries with the company.) suggests the approach will work as FWE excels in the 21st century.

“It is truly is a team of ownership and quality, from top down and bottom up,” says Lichte. “People in fabrication, on the assembly line or the shipping department can stop production or products from proceeding if they feel there is a question or concern that needs to be addressed, regardless if the concern arises in their department or in some other area of the operation. We have truly fostered a “commitment to excellence” to assure a pleasant and quality experience for the end user when in receipt of their purchase as well as after.”