Foodservice Partners:

Food Journal #2

Grace Jastrom

15 October 2021

HIST 3400
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Enter any grocery store and look around at the selection of products. What do you see?

Do you know where all that food originated? How long did it travel to get there? Is it from down

the road or across oceans? Most people would never think about understanding the production of

pre-made ramen noodles, instant potatoes, or bags of frozen vegetables. In truth, the

industrialization of food production in the last hundred years has led to the diversification of the

world’s palate, with foods from many cultures and regions donning the shelves of the everyday

grocery store. Foodservice Partners (FSP), a relatively new operation founded in 1998, is a

notable example of food industrialization and the growing business of in-house graphic

designing and high-tech packaging. Foodservice Partners encompass the idea of food

industrialization and ethical business while bringing foods of different cultures to most of the

United States.

Being founded in San Francisco in 1998 and subsequently opening four more locations

around the U.S.1, FSP creates different food products for clients, such as restaurants and private

chefs. Their newest addition to their company is the Georgia International Food Center in

Milledgeville, Georgia. As of October 2021, the latest addition has brought more than 150 jobs,

with the city predicting a total job increase of 500 in the coming years. The new building was

built in the large, old industrial kitchen that Central State Hospital used to feed patients and

inmates in the 19th and 20th centuries. The building despaired lay dormant for years before

reoccupation, as stated by tour guide and Executive Director of Vertical Operation and Custom

Solutions/Corporate Project Manager Mark Harris, with the roof caving inward and the walls

structurally unsound. However, after the facility opened, you would never have realized that it

was decrepit before. The facility is a grade-A production facility, using high-tech packaging,

1
“About Us,” Foodservice Partners, accessed 15 October 2021, https://www.fsp98.com/about
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heating, cooling, and storing food for future use. The staff is exceptionally conscious about food

and safety regulations, with all staff members wearing hair nets, smocks, and masks during work.

On tour, I also had to do the same. My group and I joked about going into Area-51 with all the

precautions we had to take before going into the kitchens and production areas. We were taken

back, for sure.

The tour consisted of a comprehensive lesson on food packaging and a thorough walk-

through of several food productions, such as jerky. He took us first to the dry storage, where it

smelt like savory spices and cinnamon. There, Mr. Harris explained that one of the main exports

of that facility was jerky. Turkey jerky, pork jerky, beef jerky, chicken jerky, and even snake

jerky has made their way through the cooking process, doctored up with spices, herbs, and other

produce, such as onion and apples. It is jerky that was used to explain most processes and

productions, such as the enormous smokehouse, which emitted a sharp sound, making me jump

multiple times.

We were then taken to a refrigerated loading dock, where fresh produce, meat, and

canned goods arrive in daily shipments. From there, we walked a direct path of food production.

Through many rooms, workers made meatballs, placed the meat into computerized ovens,

washed veggies, and even processed soups and sauces in large vats. It amazes me who many

steps and people it takes to produce a single strip of jerky or a bunch of washed salad. What

impressed me the most was the fruit and vegetable washroom, as well as the freezing room.

Large bins of lettuce are washed, spun, dried, and packaged in a single room. The product

seamlessly transfers to different machines in little time. The freezing room used large machines

to place products into sub-zero temperatures, allowing for a more extended shelf life compared

to others not frozen.

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A fascinating topic of the tour was the use of ethical, sustainable foods and produced in

their products. Mr. Harris even recalled a story when a farmer refused to sell them beef which

was free-range and organic. The company eventually ended negotiations with that farmer and

moved on to another. In a year or so, that same farmer came back offering organic and free-range

beef. With food trends heading toward healthy and clean eating, keeping up with the tide of the

food business is crucial. With this addition of an ethical and sustainable approach to food

production and processing, FSP is ahead of the pack.

Another fascinating fact about Foodservice Partners is that they also have the talent to

produce designs and logos for clients when needed. When entering the facility, you are

bombarded with banners of product logos, ranging from a soul-food brand to Japanese to Latin

American. These brands are precisely those created by chefs and the owners of FSP, and FSP

produces products under them. I found it excellent at the variety and multitude of brands there

were. The banners stretched three large factory walls at the facility’s entrance.

Using FSP as an example, food industrialization has become a normal occurrence for

brands when expediting their products to grocery shelves. Early on in food history worldwide,

specialization in one product would dominate a worker or a whole group of workers. No

mechanization meant hard labor in making, preserving, and packaging a product, usually for

travel to a close destination for peak freshness. Now, one company can produce many products

at once after using fresh food from farmers producing many different types of crops. With this

comes both an efficient method of production and a more diversified global palate. In Jeffery

Pilcher’s second edition of his book, Food in World History, he states, “New methods of

preservation, particularly canning and refrigeration, allowed such economies of scale that

factories could produce enough to feed whole cities without spoilage or waste,” and “In sheer
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quantities, the foods available to late-nineteenth-century British and North American cities out-

stripped all previous supply systems in history.”2 Using methods like those used by Foodservice

Partners creates an efficient, highly profitable, and substantive machine in producing food for a

robust society.

Even though FSP has most in common with food industrialization and globalization,

surprisingly, it also holds many of the same values as Georgia College and its liberal art values.

Along with the lack of specialization of one product, FSP encompasses many different

disciplines in their productions. This is a value of Georgia College as well, with the Georgia

College website stating, "Undergraduate study encompasses multi-disciplinary intellectual

encounters with both enduring and contemporary questions, intensive study in the major,

exposure to artistic endeavors, opportunities for scholarly research, and capstone experiences

that integrate and apply learning."3 In many first-year classes, we as students are encouraged and

required to take courses that span outside of our major and area of study. Most Bachelor of Arts

students must take two science classes to graduate, while many Bachelors of Science students

must take humanities and a foreign language. We are also encouraged to use our academic

knowledge in careers and fields, not of our own. Just as STEM, the culinary arts, graphic design,

and supply chain management outlines Foodservice Partners' business, free thought, and

academic diversity define Georgia College.

The tour at Foodservice Partners allowed me to witness the effects of food

industrialization, as well as how GCSU’s liberal arts values align with their own. Using efficient

2
Jeffery M. Pilcher, Food in World History (New York: Routledge, 2017), 64.
3
“Mission Statement,” Georgia College and State University, accessed 15 October 2021,
https://www.gcsu.edu/about/vision-values-mission-about-georgia-college
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and highly profitable machines and processes, FSP is leading the pack in sustainably minded,

ethical food production, by incorporating different disciplines into one clean production.
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Bibliography

“About Us.” Foodservice Partners. Accessed 15 October 2021. https://www.fsp98.com/about

“Mission Statement.” Georgia College and State University. Accessed 15 October 2021. vision-

values-mission-about-georgia-college

Pilcher, Jeffery M. Food in World History. New York: Routledge, 2017.