Restaurant people, on your side of the table.
We’re a purchasing co-op, not a middleman. Experts in profit, partners in clarity, and before either of those: operators, same as you.
Or call Dave: (850) 591-5061
It started with a question you’ve asked yourself.
Bengi Crosby has been in the restaurant business 35 years. His co-founder, James Weathersby, grew up in it and has 26+ years of hands-on operating behind him. Like every operator, they’d lie down at night wondering: am I getting the best deal, or am I not? Distributors kept arriving with a better program and a percentage over cost, and the honest problem was that nobody could tell you what cost actually was.
So they stopped window shopping and built the desk themselves: contracts direct with manufacturers, a negotiated freight percentage, and a monthly audit to make sure the distributor charged what was agreed. It went to work in our own restaurants first. Then other owners started asking what we were paying.
Transparency is why we started this business. That sentence hasn’t changed since the first member joined, and it’s still the whole thing.
The proof runs through our own kitchens.
Every contract MVP writes, MVP buys against, this week, at these restaurants. When food costs jump, we feel it the same Friday you do.
The mission is straightforward.
To check the work
It’s not enough to secure the best deal once. We keep checking the work with monthly audits of your purchases, so the pricing we negotiated is the pricing you keep paying.
To sleep at night
You have enough to watch. Your pricing shouldn’t be one more thing. We watch it every day, top to bottom, line by line, so you don’t have to. You run the restaurant. We’ll keep an eye on what it costs.
And the help doesn’t stop at price. Because we still run restaurants, members can call on people who run restaurants for a second opinion once they’re set up. Better prices make you money. Good advice helps you keep it.
It turns out the problem isn’t only a restaurant problem. The same program now goes to work for convenience stores, senior living, healthcare kitchens and school systems, anywhere somebody is buying food without knowing what it costs.
The people on your account
Small on purpose. You’ll know everyone’s name by the second call, and they’ll know your stores by the first.
Bengi Crosby
President & Co-Founder
35 years in the restaurant business, still operating every day. He co-founded MVP on one idea: that nobody understands restaurant owners like restaurant owners, and that an owner deserves to know what cost actually is.
James Weathersby
Co-Founder
Grew up in the restaurant business and has 26+ years of hands-on operating experience across multiple concepts. Members call him for a second opinion on vendors and operations, always from the floor, never from a deck.
Dave Duff
Chief Operating Officer
Four decades in retail, thirty of them in foodservice distribution: logistics, purchasing, warehousing, contract negotiation. He’s supported accounts from Zaxby’s and Mellow Mushroom to Blaze Pizza and Rock & Brews, and now runs that playbook for members.
Bill Burkhardt
Account Service Manager
Bill keeps order guides clean and consistent from store to store, and he knows what has to be locked down for the price to hold. Once you’re set up, he’s one of the people you’ll lean on.
Aden Crosby
Account Service Manager
From family restaurants to running a top-performing location to supporting a multi-unit district as district manager. Aden is a sounding board for owners on purchasing questions, from someone who has run the shifts.
Megan Osteen
Contract Analyst
A decade across food distribution and procurement: buying and analytics at national broadline distributors, then regional purchasing leadership at a national contract foodservice company. She’s the one who landed the bacon contract, caught the glove creep, and found the $2,300 nobody knew was missing.
“I call Bill the Beautiful Mind, and he truly is. He speaks the language and realizes what needs to be locked down for stores.”
Come meet the people.
Thirty minutes, a cup of coffee, and one of your invoices. That’s how every member relationship here has started.
Or call Dave Duff directly: (850) 591-5061