What Do Multi-Site Operators Actually Want From Their Facilities Vendors?

Every multi-site operator is protecting something different, but it usually comes down to a version of the same three things: keeping the doors open, keeping ten different brands profitable, or keeping an aging building from eating the whole budget. Different businesses, but with the same underlying question: how do you get a vendor to actually help you solve it?

That’s exactly what came up when we put seven operators and vendors on the same stage for a previous Fexa panel discussion.

Shannon Anderson, VP of Sales at Fexa, moderated the discussion, splitting the group between operators managing thousands of locations and the providers who service them: Christopher Brewer of All American Facility Maintenance, Mike Popadak of iVueit, Angela Tolmasoff of L’Oréal USA, Jeff Pawlak of ENTOUCH, Rhianon Huff of North American Signs, Joshua Witte, RFMP, of Dollar Tree Stores, and Mike Morman of Five Guys. What follows is a cleaned-up version of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, grouped by the questions that came up again and again.

What Are These Operators Actually Trying to Protect?

Before getting into how vendor relationships actually work, we asked each operator what they are optimizing for in the first place. The answers ranged from broad, board-level directives to something as simple as keeping the grills running. Here is how three very different operations describe the goal underneath everything else.

Joshua Witte, Dollar Tree Stores: “High level, company-wise we have several broad directives: grow the footprint, return value to our shareholders, operate our buildings safely and efficiently, and do all that sustainably at a low cost. Energy efficiency has come full circle for us. We were never known for doing anything green, but as budgets got squeezed and our infrastructure aged from being poorly invested in over the years, getting more efficient became top of mind all the way up to the board.”

Mike Morman, Five Guys: “Five Guys is young in its facilities department, so we don’t have these large goals yet. Right now it’s keeping stores open. The way we make our money is making burgers and fries, and the way we make burgers and fries is having cold air coming in and hot grills to make the burgers. So it’s extremely important that those doors stay open.”

Angela Tolmasoff, L’Oréal USA: “All of our brands make money in a different way, so definitely not burgers and fries at L’Oréal. It ranges from selling skincare to running one of the largest beauty distributors in the US. We’re ten brands under one team, so a lot of what we do is helping our vendors understand how each brand makes its own individual profit and building relationships that account for that.”

How Do Vendors Earn a Multi-Site Operator’s Trust?

Every operator on this panel talked about trust as something built in small steps, not handed over up front. Two providers walked through exactly what that trial period looks like from their side of the table.

Mike Morman: “This is a people-based business, not just a parts and pieces business. We focus as much money as we can at an individual vendor so they can help us with as many stores as possible. That way they win, we win, and those people become trusted enough that they’ll tell us, hey, your gas line is hanging off the wall, I’m not the guy who fixes that, but I can see it happening. That’s what makes a difference for us. I want to give a vendor as much as they can handle, but not more than they can handle, and that’s how you know it’s time to bring on a second plumber or a second HVAC tech in that market.”

Christopher Brewer, All American Facility Maintenance: “It starts with the first work order. We give you one, see how you handle it, and if that goes well we push a couple more your way. We can tell within the first four or five work orders what kind of vendor you’re going to be. It’s the overpromise and underdeliver that’s where it always falls apart.”

What Does It Look Like When a Vendor Falls Short?

Overpromising is easy to warn against in theory and much harder to catch before it costs you. Angela and Christopher each described what it actually looks like when a vendor’s capabilities do not match what got promised.

Mike Morman: “I’m never too upset if somebody makes a mistake. Mistakes happen, that’s fine. Doing it over and over again after we’ve asked you to handle it a certain way is what will end your relationship with Five Guys.”

Angela Tolmasoff: “We piloted a new lighting and electrical vendor in California and Florida, our heaviest saturation states. We sat down with them beforehand, wrote out every process, shared our sustainability specs, got everything built and approved. It felt like we had it down. But the sales side and the back of house weren’t quite talking to each other, so once we started onboarding more states, it went downhill. My advice to other retailers: slow down when you’re working with a new vendor, write it out, make sure it’s a win-win for both sides, because even when you do all of that, sometimes a partner still can’t execute at scale. Don’t overextend the capabilities of your company. Know what your team can truly deliver. It’s okay to say no.”

Christopher Brewer made the same point from the sales side of the table: “Know your operations team, know what you’re selling. Sometimes a really good salesperson comes in from a different industry and talks up the team more than the team can actually back up. That doesn’t mean we can’t use that vendor, it means focusing them on the area where they can actually be useful.”

How Can You Tell When a Vendor Is Consulting Instead of Just Selling?

Several panelists pushed back on the idea that a vendor’s job ends at the work order. Jeff, Christopher’s team, and Mike Popadak each described what it looks like when a provider is actually consulting on strategy instead of just executing tickets.

Jeff Pawlak, ENTOUCH: “Customers are leaning into our subject matter expertise. They’re not just expecting a platform, they’re expecting us to be the experts on our own product and make that available to them regularly.”

Christopher Brewer’s team gave a concrete example of what that looks like in practice: a client with around 1,600 locations was generating somewhere in the range of 6,000 to 7,000 lighting work orders a year. A retrofit brought that down to roughly 1,500. “You have to spend money to save money,” Brewer said. “We’re so focused on break-fix that we rarely stop to look at where we could save on the long run. Put the money out in year one, and by year three or four you’re not paying for the labor or the material anymore because you’re still under warranty.”

Mike Popadak, iVueit: “Every customer’s priorities are different, and it’s on us to figure out where we fit. We’re working on an asset management project right now that started because a contractor said, we want to bring in a company that’s a little different, come see what they can do. The idea is slowing down in order to go faster. Looking for ways to innovate, having a plan for where you’re going, and bringing the right partners into that plan is what best-in-class looks like from where we sit.”

How Is Vendor Collaboration Actually Changing?

The trade skills gap has hit every provider on this panel, but Rhianon’s team is responding to it in a couple of ways worth calling out on their own: rethinking what counts as waste, and treating even direct competitors as potential collaborators when it gets the client a faster answer.

Rhianon Huff, North American Signs: “We’re rethinking things we never used to think about, like relocating a sign to a new location instead of trashing it when a store closes. And honestly, there’s more collaboration across the industry than people expect. If a client needs a nighttime photo survey somewhere I don’t cover, I’ll call another provider I technically compete with, because getting the client the right answer matters more than who gets the invoice.”

How Do You Get Your Own Organization to Say Yes?

Winning the internal argument for a facilities initiative can be harder than managing the vendor relationship itself. Four panelists shared how they build that buy-in, from owning the subject matter expert role to leaning on the fear of what happens if nothing changes.

Angela Tolmasoff: “I don’t have to sell the fact that I’m the subject matter expert, I’ve been hired to lead and grow in that role. I fly out every January to meet with every brand before anyone has a budget locked in, and ask what they’re trying to achieve that year. I’m not in the room when they set the budget, I just get the final number and a job to make it work, so staying in front of them all year is how I stay useful.”

Joshua Witte: “With any project, identify your stakeholders first, figure out who it’s going to impact and how, then build the story for that audience. Get your IT stakeholders on board early and often, that alone can save a lot of headaches later.”

Rhianon Huff: “If you let people know what happens down the road if they don’t spend the money now, that future regret is usually a good trigger to get them to move.”

Jeff Pawlak: “Prospects always ask what our system costs. Very few ask what it costs to do nothing. That second question is usually the more persuasive one internally.”

What Does This Mean for Your Vendor Strategy?

Leaner teams, rising costs, and budgets that don’t move even as spend does: that’s exactly the gap Fexa’s platform is built to close. It gives multi-site operators one place to see vendor performance, R&M spend, and work order history across every location instead of piecing it together brand by brand or store by store. Fexa customers have used that visibility to identify more than $4M in R&M savings and reclaim over 300 hours of manager time a month, the same kind of ground these operators are fighting for one work order at a time.