When Robert Kirkland, now president of Sysco St. Louis, was informed that he would finish his management-track training after a move from Houston to St. Louis, he wasn’t sure what to expect here. Sysco Corporation is the nation’s largest food-distribution company, so to keep moving up at his employer, Kirkland ended up moving across the country, too.
“I was somewhat familiar with the city but it was never an extended stay, it was always a day or two or three in and out,” he said. “So what I didn’t know was about all the hidden riches of the city – Forest Park, or the zoo, or all the tremendous restaurants that are here in the city. So all of those things are a treasure find.”
Now, Kirkland is intimately familiar with the city. As Sysco is a massive distributor of, primarily, food products, the way Kirkland sees St. Louis is through food – the restaurants they distribute to, the most interesting places to get food, the food banks Sysco works with, and how the weather will affect supply shipments.
Kirkland gets to sample different foods the company may be adding to its distribution list, he said, “every day, multiple times a day.” But that’s not the best aspect of the job.
“The greatest aspect of this job is working with people,” he said. “You get an opportunity to work with really good people in St. Louis that are passionate about food. And they’re passionate about food not because it tastes good – and most places I go, it really does taste good – they’re passionate about it because food can be a window into your culture.”
The dishes that his restaurant customers create using Sysco’s supplies can help people tell their stories and connect in what can often be a siloed and isolating city. “It tells a lot about who that individual is preparing that food,” Kirkland said. “When you get an opportunity to help people tell that story, that’s fulfilling.”
However, St. Louis has a 23.3 percent food insecurity rate in the city and a 13.8 percent food insecurity rate in the county. Along with his restaurant recommendations, Kirkland is keenly aware of this issue. He wants Sysco St. Louis to play a role in solving it, both as a part of the community and because a healthier community is more likely to buy from restaurants like those stocking Sysco products.
“It is a role that we want to play very prominently,” Kirkland said. “Where there are pockets of the city and the region where food is not easy to come by, we want to be able to go out and do our business activities and service restaurants out there.”
Each year, Sysco hosts an event called “Taste of the Nation/No Kid Hungry,” where it recruits top mixologists and chefs from across the region to cook for a charity dinner.
Kirkland also detailed Sysco’s involvement in several well-known anti-hunger initiatives, such as March of Dimes and Operation Food Search, and its direct work with food pantries such as the Urban League Food Pantry, St. Louis Food Bank, and Circle of Concern, where Sysco’s surplus warehouse stock often ends up.
“Because of the nature of the business that we’re in, you’ll find us at those major things, just as much as you’ll find us at the very small things,” he said, “where folks might say, ‘You know, we have a church event that we’re out here doing and we could use a helping hand.’”
At Better Family Life’s recent Grills to Glory event, Sysco supplied over 6,000 hot dogs in a single day, he said.
Of course, Sysco is still a business – and one that has to adapt to a rapidly changing food landscape. One of the trends Sysco is adapting to is the shift towards a more health-conscious view of food. Sysco landed a deal to become the exclusive distributor of Beyond Meat products – the faux-meat base now sold as an alternative meat in some Subways and Denny’s restaurants, as well as in stores like Costco and Whole Foods.
“These plant-based alternatives are here to stay, whether it’s the Impossible Burger, which you may have seen Burger King advertising quite a bit here lately, or Beyond Meat,” Kirkland said. “We’ve done extremely well with these products. We have several restaurants that are wedded to having this on their menu. Even though they have beef products on their menu, we’ll hear more if they don’t have that plant-based alternative than we would if they didn’t have the meat products.”
As restaurants and consumers keep asking for new products, Kirkland said, Sysco will evolve with them.
“The food industry is changing every day,” Kirkland said. “As the world becomes a smaller place, people are open to trying new and different things, and it’s our job to go out and make sure we can source those ingredients they need in order to bring those recipes to life.”
