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Nearly a decade after buying TVA’s former fleet garage downtown, Chattanooga developer Chris Curtis has revamped the abandoned two-story structure on East 10th Street into the corporate headquarters for the South’s largest vending machine supplier.
Five Star Food Service, a 30-year-old food and vending machine company that expects to reach $1 billion in sales within the next four years, relocated its 67-person headquarters staff last week into the glass-covered structure across from Curtis’ Douglas Heights apartment complex.
“We couldn’t be more excited to be here,” Five Star CEO Richard Kennedy told employees gathered for a ceremonial ribbon cutting for the new headquarters location Monday. “What this allows us to do is to work together more collaboratively because we realize, just like the clients we serve, that the best way to work and interact is face to face. We’re in the business of helping our customers collaborate through their break-time experiences. We’re not just out there to provide snacks.”
Five Star has grown organically and through more than 50 business and territory acquisitions to become one of the largest privately held convenience services operators in the United States and is the largest franchise of Canteen, a Compass Group company. The company generated more than $600 million in sales last year after acquiring major markets in New Orleans, Atlanta and Nashville, and Kennedy said he is growing the firm to top $1 billion in sales by 2028.
C. J. Recher, vice president of marketing at Five Star Foods, said the company now has more than 2,200 employees working at more than 40 locations, including its food packaging facility in LaFayette, Georgia. The company is an industry leader in micro-markets, full-line vending, pantry, coffee and water services, full-service dining, catering, fresh food production, coffee roasting, secured delivery and sustainable products with operations in nine states in the Southeast.
The new 25,000-square-foot headquarters is the fourth and biggest for Five Star since the company began in Dalton, Georgia, in 1993. It replaces the former headquarters that was spread out in three office suites in the Bonny Oaks Industrial Park.
Kennedy said being downtown and close to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga should aid in attracting and keeping workers as the food vendor continues to grow. Kennedy said he hopes to have at least 80 employees working in the building by the end of the year.
The new 10th Street headquarters for Five Star is owned by Curtis’ Riverside Development LLC, which acquired the vacant building from TVA in 2013 as part of its purchase and redevelopment of several buildings along M.L. King Boulevard and East 10th Street.
“I probably turned down 15 tenants for this building waiting on the right tenant,” Curtis said in an interview Monday.
Curtis said Kennedy was one of his best friends growing up in Chattanooga and going to Baylor School “and to be able to do this kind of redevelopment in our community is a big deal for both of us.”
“When they were looking for a new headquarters site, I showed them about 20 different properties around town that were not my properties, but when they saw this site, they really wanted to be here,” Curtis said. “This helps this whole area of downtown grow and prosper, which is what we’ve been working on since buying this property.”
Riverside Development built the $41 million Douglas Heights apartments at East 10th and Douglas streets in 2016 and, after struggling through the pandemic, Curtis said the 691-unit apartment complex is now full. Curtis also owns a nearby parking lot and a handful of storefronts on M.L. King Boulevard.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6340.
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