Alternative Uses For An Refrigerated Foodservice Distribution Buildings.

An alternative use for an institutional foodservice distribution building with freezer space and cooler space refrigerated warehouse space.

The foodservice refrigerated distribution facility is one of the more recent styles of facility types in refrigerated (cold storage) building real estate. Refrigerated food processing facilities began to appear about 100 years ago. However, a refrigerated warehouse building in its most basic form can date back as far as the 1860s if you consider the use of ice as the refrigerant type. The foodservice distribution facility did not began to be widely constructed until about the mid- 1960s. In the 1970s, construction of new foodservice distribution buildings began to rapidly accelerate as the institutional foodservice industry also began rapidly expanding to accommodate the American public's food consumption habits of dining away from home, either fast food or dining out.

The 1970s institutional foodservice distribution building’s floor plan included approximately 8% refrigerated warehouse space being either freezer or cooler storage temperature capable. Today, the new construction footprint of an institutional foodservice distribution building may have as much as 50% of its floor plan being refrigerated warehouse space including both freezer warehouse and cooler warehouse temperature storage capabilities. The dramatic increase in the amount of the refrigerated warehouse portion of an institutional foodservice building demonstrates the continually increasing demand for refrigerated and frozen food products needed for the retail, wholesale and fast food restaurant industries.

When an institutional foodservice distribution building becomes available for either of these for sale, typically there were 2 types of potential prospects for this multiple temperature refrigerated warehouse building. The first type of purchase prospect is a landlord that would buy the refrigerated. Then the new owner would enter into a lease for freezer and cooler warehouse space with one tenant. Then the landlord would locate another tenant for the dry warehouse space. Occasionally, the office space is leased out to a third tenant, but most the time it remains vacant. The second type of purchaser of an institutional foodservice distribution building is a Public Refrigerated Warehousing Company or otherwise known as a PRW.

Many of these refrigerated buildings have a floor plan that totals 150,000 square feet to 250,000 square feet. This large amount of total square footage is necessary for the Public Refrigerated Warehousing Company to optimize revenues and their associated expenses. This is the industry average for the most efficient size of a building to operated as a public refrigerated warehousing company. The 3 different warehouse storage temperatures of frozen warehouse, refrigerated warehouse and ambient warehouse provided the flexibility needed by the warehouse clients utilizing public refrigerated warehousing services.

A typical institutional foodservice distribution building is a facility available for lease through Hawk Distribution Services of St. Louis, Missouri http://www.hawkds.com/ is located at 7095 Vicksburg Pike, Ft. Wayne, Indiana 46804. This institutional foodservice distribution building was bought for and currently used by a public refrigerated warehousing company. The building is a total of 145,000 ft.² and situated on 10 acres of land. The building has 55,000 ft.² of refrigerated warehouse space offering both frozen in refrigerated storage temperature for food products. There is another 55,000 ft.² of dry or ambient warehouse space in the building that is utilized for public warehousing operations. The warehousing services available include dry, cooler and freezer storage, as well as refrigerated warehouse space leasing of portions of the freezer warehouse space or cooler warehouse space.

Online tour of this facility is available at http://property.loopnet.com/14986479 or for further information contact Jim Cronin of Hawk Distribution Services. Hawk Distribution Services specializes in refrigerated building real estate brokerage services in the Midwest. Jim Cronin can be reached at 314-994-0577 or his e-mail is j.cronin@hawkds.com