We feed schools, hospitals, and shelters at pallet scale — and we treat every pallet like it is going to a kid we know.
Global Food Solutions is a family-owned manufacturer and redistributor built on a simple idea: the work matters because the people who eat the food matter. K-12 districts, USDA programs, hospitals, and shelters depend on what rolls out our Edgewood dock. That is the job. That is the whole job.
Heartland is not a warehouse. It is a hundred people moving in the same direction, on the same shift, for the same reason. Cobalt for trust. Mono for the numbers. Plain language for the work.
01
Our Values
Five words. Pick a feeling.
PRECISE
GLOBAL
FRESH
RELIABLE
INTELLIGENT
These five words are not slogans. They are filters. Before a quote ships, before a truck rolls, before an email goes out — ask whether the work is precise, global, fresh, reliable, and intelligent. If a step fails one of the five, it gets reworked.
■ Values drive decisions, not posters. If a meeting cannot point to one of these five, the meeting is the wrong meeting.
02
The Heartland Way
Five pillars. Every shift. Every desk.
01
OWNERSHIP
Anyone can fix anything. If you see it, you own it until it is closed.
02
CRAFT
Pallet-level pride. The label is straight. The lot is right. The wrap is tight.
03
FAMILY
We hire forever. Onboarding starts on day one and never really ends.
04
SCRAPPY
Get it done at any scale. One case or one truckload, same energy.
05
SHARP
Talk straight, act fast. Plain words. Short loops. Real numbers.
■ The Heartland Way is how we behave when no one is watching. Especially then.
03
Daily Rhythm
A typical day at 131 Heartland.
5:30 AM
Dock opens
First receivers in. Lights on freezer A. Coffee on in the front office.
7:00 AM
All-hands huddle
Ten minutes, standing, by the dock. Yesterday's misses, today's plan, today's risks.
8:00 AM
First trucks roll
Wave 1 staged the night before. Seals checked. Temps logged. POs out the door.
10:00 AM
Bid review
Open bids walked line by line. Pricing, specs, USDA drawdown, submission window.
12:00 PM
Lunch in the conference room
Open table. Anyone sits with anyone. Mike usually shows.
2:00 PM
Wave release
Afternoon pick wave drops to the floor. RF guns light up. Dock 2 starts staging.
4:00 PM
Dock review
Loads walked. Cube checked. Seals applied. Driver paperwork in the binder.
6:00 PM
Lights out
Coolers locked. Doors checked. Reefer alarms armed. Front office last to leave.
■ The shift is the unit of work. Hit the shift, the week takes care of itself.
04
Voice & Communication
How we talk to each other and to the trade.
Do — say it like this
PalletNot skid. Not unit load. A pallet is a pallet.
CustomerNot client. Not partner. We sell food to customers.
Net 30Not credit terms. State the terms in days.
Call don't email if urgentPhones work. Use them. Email is for receipts, not fires.
Don't — avoid this
No corporate buzzwordsSynergy, alignment, value-add — cut them.
No "circle back"Pick a time, put it on the calendar, finish the thread.
No emojis in customer emailThe trade is built on paperwork. Keep it clean.
No reply-all on internal threadsTwo people, one DM. Twenty people, one decision.
■ Plain language is a feature. The dock and the front office have to use the same words.
05
Team Snapshot
Numbers on the people.
Total Employees
~100
across Edgewood & Hermitage
Years in Business
23
since 2003
Average Tenure
4.2 yrs
company-wide
Promotions This Year
12
YTD 2026
Internal Hires
68%
of leadership openings
On-Time Performance
99.7%
rolling 90-day
■ People numbers are reviewed quarterly. If tenure dips, we look at the floor before we look at the spreadsheet.
06
Rituals & Traditions
Six things we do, on purpose, every time.
Weekly
Friday Floor Walk
Mike walks every aisle, every Friday, every week. Stops at every rack, says hello, asks one question.
Started 2003. Never missed.
Birthdays
Birthday Pallets
A card, a cake, and a hand delivery on a pallet jack. The whole team signs the card.
~100 cards a year
Quarterly
Quarterly All-Hands
Entire company gathers in the front office. Numbers, wins, what is breaking, what is next.
Q1 · Q2 · Q3 · Q4
Day One
New Hire Pancakes
Your first morning at GFS includes US Waffle pancakes. We make them. You eat them. That is the welcome.
Heartland kitchen
Bid Wins
Bid Win Bells
When a major bid is awarded, the dock bell rings. Everyone hears it. Everyone earned it.
Dock 1, brass bell
New Items
First Pallet Photo
Every new product gets a photo of the first pallet that ships. The photo goes on the wall by accounting.
124+ photos and counting
■ Rituals are how a company remembers itself. Skip one and a year later no one knows why we used to.
07
Heritage Timeline
23 years, in order.
2003
Founded
Mike Levine starts GFS on Long Island with a phone, a truck, and a pallet of pancakes.
2007
First USDA contract
Awarded our first USDA Foods conversion lane. Barrel cheddar joins the catalog.
2012
NetSuite implementation
Move off paper. Lots, customers, items, and POs land in one system.
2015
K-12 expansion
Right Start Foods line built around USDA meal standards. Schools become the core program.
2017
Acquired 131 Heartland Blvd
Edgewood becomes home. 131,000 square feet. Two docks. Three coolers. One freezer.
2019
NYC DOE bid won
First award on the New York City Department of Education food distribution contract.
2020
COVID — 24/7 operations
Schools shifted to grab-and-go. We ran the dock around the clock to keep meals moving.
2022
Hermitage PA opened
Second facility online. Adds redundancy, reach, and pallet capacity west of Heartland.
2024
R49 audit
Full system audit across NetSuite, lots, and the redistribution lane. Dead tables and dead intents dropped.
2025
Custom AI agents deployed
Ten chat roles. Pricing, costing, vendor lookup, item lookup. The platform learns the trade.
2026
Design System v10.0 launched
One visual system. Cobalt, mono, plain language. Every internal surface lines up.
■ History is not nostalgia. It is the reason the dock works at 5:30 in the morning.
From Here
The next 23 years are about depth, not noise.
2026 is a build year. We are pressing into the programs that need us most — school districts, USDA conversion lanes, and the customers that have been with us longest. Hermitage gets bigger. The AI gets sharper. The dock gets faster. Everything else gets cut.
If it does not move a pallet or protect a customer, it does not make the roadmap.
09
Our 100 People
The roles that move a pallet from receiving to delivered.
Receiving
QA Lab
Wave Lead
Driver
Picker
Forklift
Accounting
Buyer
Sales
Marketing
IT
Maintenance
Coordinator
Coordinator
Coordinator
Coordinator
■ Every role on this wall is on the org chart and on the dock floor by name. The two have to match.
10
How Decisions Get Made
Five steps. Raised by morning, shipped by next AM.
01
RAISED
Anyone can raise a problem. Floor, office, customer call — it counts.
02
DISCUSSED
Front office huddle picks it up the same day. Ten minutes, standing.
03
DECIDED
Mike or a VP signs. No committee. No memo. A clear yes or a clear no.
04
LOGGED
Captured in NetSuite or CodexBar so the next person can see what changed.
05
SHIPPED
Action by next AM. If it takes longer, it gets re-raised at the next huddle.
■ Speed of decision matters more than elegance of decision. Move, log, correct.
11
Things We Don't Do
The short list. Non-negotiable.
House rules
We don't outsource the dock.Our pallets, our people, our seal. The dock is the brand.
We don't promise what we can't deliver.If the truck cannot make the window, we say so on the call, not on the dock.
We don't lie to a customer to make a sale.One number. One spec. One delivery date. The same in writing as on the phone.
We don't take shortcuts on cold chain.Reefer logs are checked, not skimmed. A bad temp pulls a load, every time.
We don't quit at 5.If a customer is short, we stay. The clock does not run the company.
■ These are the lines. Cross one and we are not Heartland anymore.
12
Recognition Wall
Recent kudos from the floor, the front office, and the trade.
May 21
Sarah caught a $42K labeling error on the Driscoll lot before the truck rolled.
CUSTOMER
May 20
Luis stayed two hours past shift to load the NYC DOE wave when a picker called out.
MANAGER
May 19
Marisol caught a duplicate PO before it hit accounting. Saved a $14K cheddar overbuy.
PEER
May 18
Dock crew turned a 19-pallet load in 22 minutes. New floor record.
MIKE
May 16
Jordan walked an NYC DOE buyer through the spec on speakerphone at 6:40 AM. Bid stayed alive.
CUSTOMER
May 14
QA pulled a short-coded lot before it shipped to a hospital program. Hold posted, replacement out same day.
MANAGER
May 12
Anna trained two new pickers on RF and wave release in one afternoon. Both on the floor by Monday.
PEER
May 09
Whole front office stayed for the USDA submission. Filed 14 minutes before the window closed.
MIKE
■ The wall is updated every Friday. If you saw it, say it — in writing — before the weekend.
13
The Office
131 Heartland Blvd, Edgewood NY.
The building sits in the Heartland Industrial Park, ten minutes off the LIE. You park on the south side and walk through the front door into the lobby. From there it is twelve steps to the front office and forty steps to the dock. That short walk is the whole point. The people who write the orders can see the people who load them.
The conference room sits between the two. Lunch happens there. Bid reviews happen there. The first conversation with a new hire happens there. The kitchen is small, the coffee is on by 5:30, and the lights stay on until the last reefer is armed.
Address131 Heartland Blvd, Edgewood NY 11717
Sq Ft131,000
Year Acquired2017
Loading Docks14 doors · 2 staging zones
Conference Rooms2 (front office · ops)
KitchenYes · full pantry, microwave, two fridges
Coffee SetupDrip on at 5:30 AM, espresso after 9
Parking116 spaces · 6 EV chargers
■ The building is short on square feet by design. We want the office close enough to the dock that you can hear it.
Forklifts beeping on reverse. Pallet jacks rolling across the floor seams. The dock bell at five for a closed-out bid. RF guns chirping. The freezer compressor cycling in the back. Phones in the front office, mostly outbound. Sinatra on low in accounting, every Friday, no exceptions.
The GFS sonic mark is built on that floor. Three descending notes, mapped to the three rings of the brand. It plays once on app load and on confirmation states. Never on errors.
■ A building has a sound. Listen for it when you walk in. If it goes quiet, something is off.
15
Family Rules
Five lines. Print them. Live them.
Call don't email.
Eat lunch with someone you don't usually.
Walk the dock at least once a week.
Customer first, even if it costs.
Cold chain is sacred.
■ If you cannot remember the five, ask anyone on the floor. They can.
■ Every Hub page is one click from every other Hub page. Two clicks means a broken nav.
From the Founder
Stay sharp. Stay scrappy.
The work is simple and the work is hard. Move the pallet, protect the customer, take care of the person next to you on the floor. Twenty-three years in, that is still the whole job.
— Mike Levine, CEO, since 2003
18
Footprint
The shape of the company today.
People
100
Edgewood & Hermitage
Years
23
since 2003
Facilities
2
NY · PA
Weekly Routes
47
K-12 · USDA · hospital
Customers
264
active accounts
■ The footprint is small on purpose. We win on depth per customer, not breadth.