Perhaps one anecdote best describes the attitude the Whitcomb family brings to their Long Islandbased business, Whitsons Food Service. It happened in 1985, early in the company’s history, recalls Chairman/CEO Robert Whitcomb. The then-small firm had been invited to cater a luncheon for some 500 people during a mayoral visit to a homeless shelter. It was a significant opportunity to impress potential clients, but a miscommunication had Whitcomb believing the event would take place a day later than it actually was scheduled.

“Fortunately, we had bought everything early to be ready and I was sitting with a broker rep in my office on what I thought was the day before the event when the phone rang,” Whitcomb remembers. It was the Salvation Army asking where the caterers were, because the luncheon would be happening in little more than an hour and nothing was set up.

Vital Stats Name: Whitsons Food Service. Headquarters: Huntington Station, NY FY 2002 Sales: $48 million Key Segments: Higher Education, Business Dining, K-12, Delivered Meals, Off-premise Catering, Website: www.whitsons.com

At that point, the conventional reaction would have been to fess up, admit the error and concede that there was nothing to do about it. But instead, Whitcomb gave his word that the event would come off as planned and everything would be ready.

What followed was a mad scramble with all hands on deck to finish preparing food (fortunately, much had already been done in advance) and loading it onto vans. Paul Whitcomb, currently the vice president of sales & marketing, says he still has a vivid memory of that day and of feeling like his arm was going to fall off from slicing deli meats.

The astonished broker rep was corralled into going to the local bakery to pick up the previouslyordered petit fours. By the time he returned, the caravan was already pulling out for the site.

“He met us at the end of the parking lot where we transferred the petit fours into the vans and took off like a lightning bolt,” recalls Robert Whitcomb. “Fortunately, the mayor was a little late and there was no traffic, so we made it on time, and it went off with none of the guests suspecting anything had happened.”

To put a capper on the story, the pulling-success-from-the-jawsof- disaster performance so impressed the Salvation Army that the incident inaugurated a strong relationship between the organizations that has endured to this day.

Were the Whitcombs lucky? Certainly. But also very dedicated and determined, and the company Bob Whitcomb, his eight siblings and their mother collaborate to operate still strives to run on those old-fashioned principles of sticking to your commitments and doing what it takes to honor them.

Yes, it seems anachronistic and somewhat hokey—until you talk to Bob Whitcomb and see how earnestly he believes it. And that same attitude is shared by the other Whitcombs and of the nonfamily members of the firm as well, and it goes a long way to explain why a company that got its start as an amateur restaurant operation teetering on the brink of bankruptcy today is a very successful foodservice contract management firm.

(The company name, by the way, is a contraction of “Whitcomb Sons” and refers to the family’s three oldest boys, who were the ones initially involved in the enterprise; by the time their sisters entered the business, it was too late to change the established brand.)

Strong growth

Last year’s sales at Whitsons stood at around $48 million, an impressive 20 percent jump from 2001 and the latest in a series of substantial annual increases that were all achieved without acquisitions, which the Whitcombs don’t absolutely rule out but basically shun as disruptive to company culture.

In the past 15 years, Whitsons established a strong regional foothold in three key onsite segments—schools, colleges and business dining—while also nurturing a flourishing vending business, a growing off-premise catering division and a booming culinary center operation supplying pre-prepared plated and bulk foods to clients in senior feeding, corrections, homeless shelters and childcare facilities.

Perhaps most impressively, this is all being done in the ultra-competitive Mid-Atlantic market, home base for at least half a dozen other major regional contractors and prime hunting territory for the three big national companies. Currently, Whitsons operates in a territory extending from Long Island into Connecticut to the north, eastern Pennsylvania to the west and Baltimore to the south, including New Jersey and Eastern New York State.