Dirks has had a long career in foodservice and c-stores that began in his father's grocery stores at age eight. He worked his way through college at Safeway. After graduating from Washington State University in 1983, Dean accepted a position in retail foodservice [image-nocss] with Marriott. In this role, he supervised branded concepts including Starbucks, Domino's Pizza, Godfather's and Little Caesars as well as proprietary foodservice.
In 1996, he joined West Star as vice president of operations. His responsibilities included supervising 30 Shell-branded c-stores and 20 restaurants including Subway, Taco Bell, A&W, Winchell's Donuts, Seattle Best Coffee and a number of proprietary foodservice concepts.
After WestStar was sold, Dirks accepted a position with Balmar Petroleum as the senior category manager, overseeing all categories, including foodservice.
In 2006, he formed Dirks & Associates, focusing on c-store foodservice. He has worked with Arby's, Church's Chicken and Qdoba's, as well as many proprietary foodservice concepts.
Montgomery added, "Dean has a long and very successful history in the industry as a retailer and supplier. b2b Solutions is extremely proud to be able make his extensive foodservice expertise available to our retailer clients."
b2b Solutions provides retailers with a wide range of consulting services designed to assist the retailer in improving short- and long-term profitability. These efforts include working with retailers in the areas of business planning, consolidation and merger and acquisition advice, operations analysisand improvement, marketing plans and tactics, foodservice, human resources, training, technology integration and gasoline marketing.
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