MEMBER SPOTLIGHT ASSOCIATE: Deirdre Flynn, NAFEM - April/May 2025

Meet Deirdre Flynn, NAFEM:
Change the status quo.

Name: Deirdre Flynn 
Company: NAFEM
Title: Executive Vice President
Years in "The Biz": One way or the other, 40+
Interviewed by: Chris East, Principal, Chrane Foodservice Solutions

Deirdre Flynn knows the foodservice equipment industry inside and out. As executive vice president of the North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM), she ensures the organization runs smoothly while continuously enhancing the value it provides through education, training, advocacy, networking, industry relations, data sharing, and The NAFEM Show.

Deirdre has been NAFEM’s chief staff executive since 2002, but her journey with the association began nearly two decades earlier during her time at Smithbucklin, where she managed everything from trade shows to strategic planning. With a career spanning marketing and leadership roles across food and foodservice organizations, healthcare societies, and tech user roles, she brings a wealth of experience—and a deep passion for the industry—to everything she does.

1. What's one of the more rewarding things that you get to do to help the industry?
   
   It's working with an incredibly talented board of directors to see what programs and services are most helpful for the channel, and we consider the channel to be NAFEM, MAFSI, FCSI, FEDA and CFESA to help the channel grow the industry for their respective and collaborative customers. We can't do it without each other. You need equipment to be able to sell, to work with your customer, and to work with the dealer and the consultant out there that's building and designing restaurants.
   
   I think it's attracting and growing young talent in the industry and making sure that programs and services that we offer give them the background, the resources, and the information they need to grow and prosper in their careers. Our certification program to have people become CFSP certified, and to have a designation that really distinguishes you as being somebody who understands the complete and total package of delivering a foodservice outlet to all of us who are foodservice outlet customers in the long run.
   
   The most recent thing that I am most proud of was launched in 2020, a social purpose program. We chose to partner with Feeding America to hopefully eradicate hunger and we are now in our sixth year since we launched the program. We went on lock down because of the pandemic a month later, but in five years, we have put 43 million meals into local communities. So it's incredibly rewarding to see our members receive a claim and dig down deep and help support their communities.
   
   
2. What’s one piece of advice you have for a young person in the industry?
   
   

   I think the most important thing is to listen and watch the people around you, the people that you're working with on your team, to ask a lot of questions and never turn down an opportunity. All of us who work on the staff side for associations, institutes, and professional societies, none of us ever thought that's what we would be doing as a career. As I joined Smithbucklin, I had a lot of opportunities across a lot of industries, and I never said no to them. I never wanted to leave NAFEM because NAFEM was something that was easily explainable to somebody else.
   
   When you go to a restaurant and you enjoy a great meal, my guys are the people that built the equipment that made that meal for you, and hospitality is what brings people together. So it's that face to face. It surpasses technology, even though technology is really embedded in the industry now and it's it's showing how the industry is growing and morphing. It's still that face to face, the thing that brings people together, which I think is so fascinating.
   
   So for a young person, it's be a sponge, soak up all the information that you can never turn down an opportunity. Don't feel like you have to have the answer. Ask questions and gain information so that you can then put the answer together for someone. You're not expected to know everything right away. And if you do think you know everything, you're in the wrong industry, you need to step aside and get some more training and be a little bit more humbled, you know, overall in comparison.

3. How do you see hospitality and technology moving forward and complementing each other without one getting lost along the way?
   
   I think that technology helps us and the industry, because it keeps us connected more easily than in the past. More than anything else, the pandemic reminded us just how valuable our time truly is. Everybody was locked down, and we learned to use technology. We learned to be much more efficient in the time that we spent with each other. Now I think it's a combination - how do we expand and use those technologies to our benefit, without forsaking the face-to-face interaction that's necessary to see a customer operation in action. 
   
   Things are very different than they were five years ago, in comparison how foodservice outlets are delivering to their customers. The proliferation of grab and go technology to order anywhere in the world where you are has us eating differently than we did in the past. We look to depending on economic conditions, we change our eating habits, and we do things differently. Groceries came back and expanded tremendously with prepared food options.
   
   I think technology helps us be more efficient, stronger, and helps us deliver to that customer in a better, faster, more efficient way. It also helps us deliver to that customer more efficiently. It's a little scary, because it leaves less think time, to some extent, because you're expected to answer 24/7 because the technology is available 24/7 and I think you have to put realistic boundaries around the technology so that it works to everybody's advantage.
   
   
4. What are some of the things that fill up your time and some hobbies and activities that refill your passion for NAFEM?
   
   

   I like to bake, not cook as much. I love to read, trash TV, and series TV. Reality TV is an escape, because I can't believe that people actually are on reality TV the way they are. I think it's hilarious and it's worth a laugh in comparison. I knit too. Buffy Levy, our show director, and I often have our knitting projects with us and get stuff done in our own little knitting circle when traveling together.

5. What is your favorite thing to bake?
   
   My signature dish, to quote Bobby Flay, is Lemon Squares.
   
   
6. What is your favorite book?
   
   Currently, I'm reading The Covenant of Water. The author also wrote Cutting for Stone—both are beautifully written, long books that you can really escape into. I think my all-time favorite book is The Cider House Rules by John Irving, and Growing Up by Russell Baker is another one of my favorites.
   
   
7. If you could eat anywhere for your next meal, where would it be and why?
   
   

   My favorite place to eat is any Italian restaurant. If I could eat anywhere in the world, it would be any place in Italy. I think Italy is a beautiful country. I've not spent a lot of time there. I've not been to every city, but I think the language is lyrical. I think people can be telling you that you're an idiot, and it sounds beautiful when it comes out of their mouth. Anything Italian, I think, would be my first choice, and then junk food would be my second choice.

8. In your role at NAFEM, what do you get the most personal gratification out of?
   
   I get the most personal gratification from working with NAFEM because its strength comes directly from its members—and the membership is incredibly diverse. There are a lot of myths out there about who the average NAFEM member is, or what makes up NAFEM membership. NAFEM is pretty equally divided between corporate and independent manufacturers on the supply side of the industry. Smallwares and middleware dominate the membership. That's about 60% to 62% of the membership. Large conglomerates are only 8% of the membership, and yes, they're big in volume, but it's a small percentage. You've got a lot of diverse opinions and needs. It's great.
   
   NAFEM and the board is very mindful of making sure that we're balanced among heavy equipment, middleware, and smallwears representation on our board. We're very mindful of having that same kind of representation in the programs and services that we offer, so that there's something for everyone within NAFEM. Being NAFEM's voice on the advocacy front and the manufacturer's voice on the advocacy front. Not all members make equipment that might come under a regulatory change, but to have a seat at the table to know how it will impact that group of NAFEM members who can't afford to have an advocacy team on their own, I think is an important function that the association has to fill overall. 
   
   It's really making sure that we have those people engaged. We have members engaged in all we do. So we have about 15 active working groups. We don't call them committees anymore, because they don't have to meet on a regular basis. They're more issue based than anything else now. We have two appointed committees and 15 active working committees, and that's an opportunity for members to engage and help us steer what those program and service offerings are. So our strength is because we get member engagement.
   
   
9. What advice would you pass on to MAFSI members based on your positive experiences from NAFEM?
   
   

   That's a good question. That's a hard question, too. I think the experience I would want to pass on to a MAFSI member is to get engaged. You learn so much from your fellow MAFSI members, and recognize that our members can't exist without their MAFSI reps. They just can't. You are the people that are on the street. You are the people who are interacting with customers.
   
   Feed that information back to the person at the manufacturer level who is responsible for managing what you're doing. Feed that information back so that collectively, we're stronger as an industry. That can help you with engagement on what MAFSI needs to teach its members, and that can help NAFEM on what they need to teach its member so that we're operating as one cohesively.
   
   It's not a pass through type of thing that we've all evolved over time. Years and years ago, MAFSI used to do the sales managers forum for the manufacturers, and then the MAFSI conference started. It was kind of crazy, when you think of it, that they were hearing something without you in the room, and you were hearing something necessarily without them in the room, when you're both doing the same thing. With that in mind, I think that it's all about getting involved. You learn more from each other. Then the strength of one can be the strength of many.

10. What's one of your favorite memories of working with Alison Cody?
    
    Despite the fact that we're youngsters, Allison and I have worked together for a really long time, because she too was at Smithbuklin back in the early part of her career, working with MAFSI before she detoured and then MAFSI moved to Atlanta. I think my favorite thing was when I first moved into this role, self up, we traveled a lot together. Part of it was the circuit. Everybody had their meetings each month for the first five months of the year, so we were seeing each other every three weeks. In the course of that, it was if you've never had the opportunity to share a meal with Allison, you should, because every condiment known to man ends up on the table.
    
    She has an incredible passion and dedication and commitment to MAFSI, and that's helped MAFSI grow over the years. All of my counterparts at the association are incredibly dedicated to their organizations, and we laugh a lot. We're not neurosurgeons. We're not brain surgeons on this. We are just trying to make sure people understand what we're doing, what we have to offer, how they can benefit from it. It's that hospitality edge. It's that we have fun together. I think that's the most important thing, that hospitality represents a kindness and a humor to it. We can laugh at ourselves, and we can help each other through dark times, and we can celebrate with each other through the good times.

As we all know, there’s considerably more to MAFSI members than being a rep or manufacturer, and we want other members to know about it!

Are you passionate about a particular philanthropic cause? Are you a huge foodie? Maybe you’re an avid skydiver? Whatever it is – we want to know about it — and SEE you doing it!

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