Q3 2024 Wholesale Outlook feat. Hawaii Foodservice Alliance LLC
HFA supports clients in addressing the labor shortage by providing embedded services and prioritizing staff growth through training and career development programs.
Q&A with: Chad Buck
Founder, Owner,
Hawaii Foodservice Alliance
Your clients and customers may have faced huge challenges this year. How have you helped them address those challenges?
HFA is filling the labor shortage as a service.
The tight labor market is one of the biggest challenges that our customers are facing this year.
While our customers have struggled with a shortage of qualified labor for years, this post pandemic period has proven to be especially difficult for many.
To provide a solution for our customers during this time, we accelerated the expansion of our embedded and ancillary services. These services consist of HFA professionals reporting to our customers’ locations and working within our customers’ operations, and/or providing dedicated services and functions that our customers are unable to staff on their own. Placements can be temporary, task specific, or permanent. In all cases, our embedded services help our customers to operate at full capacity and to keep their businesses operating. These efforts underpin the value we place on our relationships, our loyalty, and our long-term commitment to the success of our customers, especially when they find themselves in challenging situations.
How have important projects and plans for 2023 progressed to this point?
We are supporting the growth of our team members to meet the needs of our customers.
Providing our customers with professional staffing and project support creates additional opportunities for the career growth of our staff members. To support the ambitions of our staff members, we provide a variety of internal education and training programs. Our field training offers free driver training certifications up to CDL-A (tractor trailers). Our leadership training starts with basic supervisor training and extends to more advanced sessions based on Strength Finders, Brene Brown, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and other material. We also have our own Toastmasters club to help our staff members hone their communication skills. To ensure staff members have the time to develop their skillsets, these courses are held on work time as part of their job functions. At HFA, our priority is to provide the tools for our people to grow into the best version of themselves – both personally and professionally. The high level of service and connection between our staff members and customers are a direct reflection of our internal investment in the goals and aspirations of our team members.
2720 Waiwai Loop, Honolulu, HI 96819
(808) 839-2004
hfahawaii.com
