The idea of addition by subtraction is nothing new. In the case of Middleby Corp., however, the first seven months of 2026 have been defined in many ways by addition through subtraction. And this will impact its role in the foodservice industry in a variety of ways.

When the calendar rolled over to 2026, Middleby consisted of three business units: commercial foodservice equipment, commercial food processing equipment and residential kitchens. In February Middleby sold 51% of its residential kitchen platform to private-equity firm 26North. Since that time, the name of the residential business has changed to Composition Brands and Middleby maintains a 49% ownership stake in the business.

Earlier this month, Middleby spun off its commercial food processing business unit. Now an independent, publicly traded company, it goes to market as Midera and has annual revenues of slightly less than $1 billion.

As a result of these two moves, for the first time in quite a while Middleby’s focus rests entirely on the commercial foodservice industry.

“This gets us back to where we are growing and investing in commercial foodservice with people, technologies and acquisitions. We have not been doing a lot of acquisitions in recent years,” says Steve Spittle, Middleby’s chief commercial officer. “We will continue to invest in bringing new products to market. In the past three to four years, we have developed more products than at any time in our history. These moves will allow us to go faster in bringing those products to market.”

Acquisitions have long been a cornerstone of Middleby’s growth strategy. “We are reaping the benefits of a lot of the acquisitions we made prior to Covid,” Spittle says. As an example, he points to the company’s fast-growing ice and beverage platform, which includes a variety of brands Middleby has acquired over the years, including Follett, Marco Beverage Systems, Icetro and Concordia Coffee, among others.

“We have also had a lot of investments around technology companies,” Spittle says, pointing to the company’s 2019 acquisition of Powerhouse Dynamics as one such example. “We are starting to reap the benefits of those non-traditional acquisitions, too.”

So, expect acquisitions to eventually be part of Middleby’s plans moving forward. “The first part of that is making sure we are executing on the current portfolio,” Spittle says. “The second part is we will get back to making acquisitions strategically. There’s still a lot of white space out there for us.”

While acquisitions have allowed Middleby to scale its company in recent years, they also brought with them some other challenges the company had to address, particularly in its rep network. “Every acquisition brought its own network of reps. So, if you wanted to do a project with Middleby you might have had to call six or eight different reps,” Spittle said.

At one point, the company had 156 reps selling Middleby products, Spittle notes. This led to the company spending several years streamlining and refining its rep network to the point where it now consists of just 16 companies, Spittle says. “We’ve transformed our relationship with our reps. You can be so much more strategic and open when they are focused just on Middleby. Now it’s so much easier to navigate Middleby. It’s one rep. It’s one phone call. Having fewer reps is better than more because you want your best reps to do their best work every day.”

Middleby has been strategic in how the company supports its reps, too. “We’ve invested in them from a search standpoint and a financial standpoint to help bring people into their organizations,” Spittle says. “We know when you are investing in people there is a short-term loss until that person starts generating revenue.”

At the same time, Middleby continues to take steps to build relationships with foodservice equipment and supplies dealers, that often handle the design, sales, distribution and installation of its products. “The Middleby Innovation Kitchen has been critical in taking our relationship with so many dealers from being transactional to being strategic,” says Spittle, who adds that dealers regularly flow through the Dallas space for various reasons. “We’ve also given our dealers a lot of technology tools which give them insight into our products.”

Service represents another critical link on the foodservice equipment supply chain and Middleby is making investments there, too. Earlier this year, for example, Middleby hired industry veteran Kevin Fink to serve as senior vice president of Middleby Advantage and Middleby First Service.

By investing in service, Middleby can help provide better experiences for operators, dealers, reps and anyone else that may work with the company, Spittle says. “Service touches all of that. Our approach is that we have to have a unique service network with capabilities that nobody has. Now it has been put into hyper drive. If we can solve for service and do what we intend to do, it will be a competitive advantage.”

The true point of differentiation for this new Middleby era may, in fact, be continuity. “For our leadership team, foodservice has been our lives. We understand the business and we are very involved. We are very intentional and now that we are focused on commercial foodservice this will happen more and more,” Spittle says. “In some ways, dealers should not see a lot of change because we’ve been executing every day. But we will layer in more focus from the leadership team down which should enhance the relationship.”

Entering this new phase of its history, Middleby feels it will do so as a more agile company. “On paper we are a $2.5 billion company with 75 brands,” Spittle says. “We are complex because of the brand portfolio and the fact that they are operating all over the world. But we don’t think of ourselves as a massive industrial complex. The way we have been and will be more nimble, is by continuing to have great people and empowering them to do great work every day. Although we are a publicly traded company, we want to maintain our entrepreneurial spirit.”

Doing so will allow Middleby to continue to grow with its customers. “We are growing internationally and if you look at where our bigger chain companies are growing it is in international markets,” Spittle says. “So being nimble can mean having the right structure, people and service in those international markets. We want those customers in those international markets to have a great experience, too. And that comes back to having infrastructure and people. We have to be agile and nimble to keep up with those customers.”

Source https://fesmag.com/topics/the-latest-news/23757-middleby%E2%80%99s-next-chapter