Windjammer Capital Investors has acquired Heritage Food Service Group, a distributor of OEM replacement and repair parts for commercial kitchen equipment used in the foodservice industry. Windjammer partnered with Heritage’s management team to acquire the business from The Jordan Company which acquired the company in December 2011.
Heritage is a high volume, low dollar amount distributor. The company has more than 43,000 stocked SKUs and has access to over 100,000 total SKUs which enables the company to act as a one-stop-shop provider to its customers. Heritage sources its products from over 800 foodservice OEMs and provides its customers – such as restaurant chains, hospitals, cruise lines, hotels and correctional institutions – with products and services that are critical to serving the break/fix, recurring repair and maintenance needs of commercial kitchens. Heritage has more than 45,000 customers in the US and Canada. The company was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Ft. Wayne, IN (www.heritageparts.com).
“Heritage provides a critical link between OEMs and a highly fragmented customer base that relies on the company to deliver mission critical parts on an expedited basis due to the break-fix business environment,” said Greg Bondick, Managing Director at Windjammer, who led the transaction for the firm. “Heritage’s breadth and depth of inventory combined with a 98% same day shipment of in stock items have helped the company create a market leadership position in the industry.”
Windjammer makes control investments in middle market businesses with EBITDAs from $10 million to $40 million. Sectors of interest include advanced manufacturing, specialty distribution and business services. Windjammer was founded in 1990 and is based in Newport Beach, CA and Waltham, MA (www.windjammercapital.com).
Heritage is the fourth platform investment in Windjammer’s $726 million Senior Equity Fund IV which closed in March of 2013. Greg Bondick, John Donahue, Daniel Lee and Vidur Mittal worked on the transaction for Windjammer.
“Windjammer is an ideal partner for the company,” said John McDonough, CEO of Heritage. “The resources Windjammer provides and its successful track record of working with portfolio companies and management teams to create value for their investors makes us confident that we will be able to execute on our growth plan during this next stage of the company’s development.”
“We are excited to add Heritage and its management team to the Windjammer portfolio,” said Costa Littas, Managing Principal of Windjammer. “The company meets all or our key investment criteria. John McDonough and his team have built a strong foundation to support the company’s growth initiatives and meet the market’s high performance expectations.”
The Jordan Company, the seller of Heritage, is a middle-market private equity firm with over $6 billion of assets under management. The firm was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in New York with additional offices in Chicago and Shanghai (www.thejordancompany.com).
Robert W. Baird & Co. was the financial advisor to The Jordan Company on this transaction.
© 2015 PEPD • Private Equity’s Leading News Magazine • 10-21-15