Fresh Ideas food service celebrates milestone

John Orscheln, co-owner of Fresh Ideas Food Service Management, comes from a family that has launched a wide variety of businesses in mid-Missouri since his great uncles Ed and William Orscheln left the family farm near Tipton and established a trucking company in the 1930s.
Orscheln Farm & Home, a chain of supply stores, is one of more than a dozen privately owned businesses subsidiary to Orscheln Industries. John Orscheln’s father, Don, is a board member and former president of the parent company based in Moberly.
Orscheln (pronounced orsh-linn) earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at Columbia College, but his career veered away from the business world after he served in the Army for six years. He was an admissions officer at Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Mo., and commandant of the Junior School at Missouri Military Academy in Mexico.
Then in 1999 his father took him aside and asked, “John, isn’t it about time you started your own business?”
Orscheln, whose company is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, said the question made particular sense for a member of his entrepreneurial family.
“My dad was right,” he said, “and I knew just the guy to call.”
Orscheln and Matt Clervi met and became friends at Wentworth Military Academy, where Clervi was the director of food services.
“I would take prospective students to see Matt’s operation,” Orscheln said. “It was a real selling point for the school.”
Orscheln moved on from Wentworth but stayed in touch with Clervi and suggested they meet to talk about business opportunities.
Clervi said Orscheln’s drive and financial backing combined with his food services background positioned them to start a food service management company.
Taking notes on bar napkins, the two men settled on Fresh Ideas as the name. The company, which is independent of Orscheln Industries, started in December 1999 and landed its first customer, Central Methodist University, in August 2000. Clervi, a co-owner, joined the day-to-day operations of the company a few months later.
On Aug. 16, Fresh Ideas marked its 10th anniversary by holding an open house at its offices on West Nifong Boulevard for vendors, employees, clients and friends.

Fresh Ideas now has about 400 employees and annually hires about 300 students in work-study programs. Fresh Ideas serves food in cafeteria settings at more than a dozen schools in Missouri, primarily colleges and universities. The company’s business client list includes three manufacturing companies in Columbia — 3M, Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats — along with the ABB transformer factory in Jefferson City.
Orscheln, the CEO, and Clervi, the executive vice president, said their success is due to their intense focus on employees rather than profits.
“A lot of businesses start out wanting to make a lot of cash,” Clervi said. “Our model is more about the employees, having happy employees, so we developed processes and systems around that idea.”
Marianne Inman, president of Central Methodist University, was involved with the decision to become Fresh Ideas’ first customer 10 years ago.
“We recognized it was a risk,” she said. “We just felt that from everything we heard and things we knew that it was worth the risk, and it certainly has been. It’s a very comfortable relationship.”
Fresh Ideas still serves Central Methodist University, and Clervi said the company has a 90 percent retention rate for customers, which dates back to the company’s founding.
The founders said success is all about keeping the employees happy.
“We used Enterprise Leasing as a model because in the beginning, they really focused on the employees,” Clervi said. “They said you can’t focus on the cash; you have to focus on the employees.”
“When we hire an employee, we look at them as much as we look at the accounting statements,” he said. “That’s who we are as a company.”

Clervi said this philosophy includes: ensuring competitive wages, providing opportunities for professional and personal development, creating an environment where employees feel empowered and see room for upward growth and promoting from within the company.
“They are really the things that any good company does,” Clervi said. “But these are our priorities.”
From the beginning, Orscheln and Clervi strived to create human resources systems and practices that would match their employee-centric philosophy. Their efforts received a boost in 2005 with the hire of Bob Barnes as president. Barnes’ experience included executive-level positions in Fortune 500 companies Boise Cascade Corporation and Weyerhauser.
“Bob really deserves a lot of the credit for the way we operate today,” Orscheln said. “His background in big corporations made a big difference.”
Fresh Ideas has one account in Arkansas, and the goal in coming years is to expand into the states surrounding Missouri.
“It’s not because we need to grow; it’s because our employees need opportunities for upward mobility,” Clervi said. “That’s what we’ve told them we would do for them.”

Orscheln and Clervi said they are confident that their values-based approach and commitment to their employees is the key to their success and their future.
“Anybody can do food service; nobody can be Fresh Ideas,” Clervi said. “I think it is our model for excellence that separates us from our competitors.”