We are currently counting down the days to RFMA 2012 and I am excited to announce my next blog guest Roger Goldstein from Panda Restaurant Group. Roger has been an active part of RFMA serving on the Education committee and is an incoming RFMA Board Member for this year. Roger shares in his post the success he has found through RFMA and the RFMA annual conference. Enjoy!

Having gone from being a small local service vendor to working for a national restaurant chain I was fairly naive when it came to an expanded view of facilities and connecting with what peer companies do in their facilities departments. RFMA solved this the minute I attended my first conference in 2009, I was energized and ready to get involved and learn more. Joining the education committee gave me a chance to see firsthand all the opportunities there are for our industry to grow and learn from each other and thru educational sessions at the conference.

Listening and learning from experienced peers in facilities has been invaluable in my growth and I encourage every member to get involved and go out and share what you know with others.

The RFMA conference also gave me the chance to see innovative technology and meet potential business partners in our vendor members, leading to great relationships.

Roger Goldstein
Director, Facilities
Panda Restaurant Group, Inc.

Thanks Roger for sharing your RFMA story!

Email heather@rfmaonline.com if you or your company has a success story to share!

I would like to introduce my next blog post guest writer, Eli Danze with The Chism Company. Eli has been an active member of RFMA serving as Chair of the Membership Retention Committee. Along with leading his committee, Eli also is a social media guru who is constantly spreading news and success stories about RFMA through all channels of social media. Here are some thoughts that Eli wanted to share about his and The Chism Company's RFMA experience.

Invited by a few customers to join RFMA three years ago. Involvement with the association is a long-term investment for The Chism Company. As opposed to conferences or associations where being involved over a three day period may bring short term gains, it may take multiple years to build a working relationship with RFMA members. However, this creates the opportunity to enjoy long-term success over a five to ten to twenty year period.

Business may be completed remotely every day, but when you have the opportunity to take business to a face-to-face personal level, building a relationship begins. Chism management and team members made an investment decision to join RFMA three years ago, and we proudly came home from the RFMA 2010 Conference with the New Member of the Year Award!!

Proudly supporting RFMA and its membership, we at Chism Company are here to stay.

Eli Danze
The Chism Company

To start off this blog I would like to spotlight Bob Schreiber with Starbucks Coffee. Bob has been a RFMA member since 2006 and continues to be an avid supporter of RFMA. Over the years, Bob has had several success stories about connecting with other RFMA members and wanted to share one of these stories. One connection Bob made with a RFMA vendor member helped bring Starbucks Coffee major savings over the last two years. Below Bob talks about this connection story along with some of the benefits from attending RFMA's annual conference.

· One of the benefits we have received is cost savings of over $100K in each FY10 and FY11. Savings originated from sourcing low cost vendors with high expertise, finding new products, technology and services from both new and existing vendors, ideas from sessions and relationships from external Starbucks peers. Lightstat was one vendors who we meet years ago and encouraged them to display their products to Corporate, which they did.

· Another benefit from the convention is the knowledge the FSMs and FRs obtained from the conference. This is part of their PDPs. The sessions are a mix of technical and soft skills. This has helped the growth of the FSMs and their thought process. Last year some of the FSMs became facilitators for the facility roundtables. And Starbucks now has FSMs on the Education and Recruitment committees. One FSM has gone from NI to AE in two years in part to his RFMA learning.

· The third major benefit of attending is gaining an external peer group. The external peer group allows the FSMs to understand other methods of doing facility work. This leads to new tools and ways to improve Starbucks facilities. If we do not encourage dialogue with external peers there is possibility we may fall behind in effective ways in facility management. The convention has a breakout session that divides attendees into regional groups so you can meet their peers in their geographical area. There are meetings after the convention for the groups to continue dialogue. The FSMs meet external peers in the sessions and as they tour the vendor trade show.