Keeping it Local and Connected: How Forth Foods Thrives with Altigen’s MaxCloud UC
For over half a century, Forth Foods has been a cornerstone of local commerce, starting with a single grocery store opened by Charles Forth in 1967. Today, under the Food Fair brand, the operation boasts 16 locations across West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, along with a distribution warehouse and trucking fleet.
A Different Kind of Growth
In a market dominated by giants like Walmart and Kroger, Food Fair hasn’t just survived—it’s thrived. Their strategy is refreshingly local: growing by acquiring or merging with smaller family-owned stores that were struggling to make it alone. This commitment to keeping money in the local community—by encouraging customers to “buy local”—is a key part of their enduring success.
The Challenge of Connecting 16 Locations
Success also depends heavily on efficient and seamless operations. As the company grew, managing communications across 16 separate locations, spread across three states, became more complex. They needed a unified system that could keep employees connected, eliminate points of failure, and be easy to manage without the burden of maintaining equipment across the entire fleet of stores.
Forth Foods partnered with Altigen to migrate all 16 locations to MaxCloud UC, Altigen’s cloud-based unified communications (UC) hosted phone system.
MaxCloud UC: Bringing Everyone Together
MaxCloud UC, a geo-redundant, hosted solution, transformed how Forth Foods employees connect. Hosted in the cloud, the system eliminates any single point of failure, with each location connected directly to the cloud via the internet. Ben Jitima, It Director, has been with Forth Foods for 20 years and worked directly with Altigen on the implementation.
“The service is easy to manage,” said Jitima. “And having it hosted in the Cloud gives us the functionality we need without the burden of maintaining physical equipment across 16 locations.”
Jitima highlights the benefits as:
- Seamless Inter-Location Calling: “It’s like everyone is in the same location.” With a single system, reaching an employee at another Food Fair store is now convenient and simple.
- Mobility and Accessibility: The cell phone user application makes it easy to reach staff who are moving around the store or even traveling between locations.
- Integration with Existing Systems: Although it’s a cloud solution, the team was able to integrate with the overhead paging units at each store.
A Smooth Transition to the Cloud
The migration itself was quick and efficient, with everything converted in just a few weeks. Altigen support played a key role, assisting in getting nearly 200 devices up and running. Jitima noted the great service: “It went very smoothly, and they took very good care of us.”
“It’s been great working with Forth Foods,” said Matt Nielson, Altigen’s North America Channel Manager. “They have a great team that has built a very loyal customer base over the years. It’s obvious that service and quality are important to the company.”
