Nashville, Tennessee – October 08, 2026 – PRESSADVANTAGE –
Matthew Yaz, CEO of Chef’s Deal Restaurant Equipment, received the Ascending Young Industry Leaders Award at the FEDA Gold Awards, presented on September 17, 2026, during the Gold Awards Breakfast at the 2026 FEDA Annual Executive Leadership Conference in Park City. FEDA, the trade association for foodservice equipment distributors, presented the Gold Awards to member companies and individual professionals for their contributions to the industry.
Honorees applied, and FEDA evaluated how each company handled workplace practices, customer service, and the development of younger staff. The Ascending Young Industry Leaders category targets emerging professionals who have shown growing leadership capability, for example through innovation, project management, career development, or community involvement.
FEDA cited Yaz’s work in three areas: growing the company’s operations, developing its employees, and broadening the range of foodservice solutions the company offers. Over the past year, he guided a company-wide enterprise resource planning system rollout that required roughly a year of planning, development, testing, and cross-department coordination before launching in summer 2026. He also coordinated the addition of a second warehouse location in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and helped establish more structured career growth paths, including defined progression within the sales team, mentoring, and cross-department training. Yaz entered the foodservice equipment industry in 2020 from a different professional background.
“Growth at this scale is not something one person solves alone,” said Matthew Yaz, CEO of Chef’s Deal Restaurant Equipment. “It requires people, processes, and technology to develop together, and my role has shifted from fixing individual problems to building an organization that can carry projects through. This recognition belongs to the Chef’s Deal team, whose work made that progress possible.”
The recognition carries practical meaning for multi-unit operators and those launching new restaurants who are choosing a long-term equipment partner. Leadership that aligns internal systems and people helps a distributor keep pace with project timelines, budgets, and opening schedules, which are the factors operators weigh when planning a build-out.
Distributor leadership has grown more relevant as restaurant and hospitality businesses face pressure from labor costs, margins, energy costs, and project timelines. Equipment purchasing has increasingly become a planning and coordination decision rather than a single product transaction, placing greater importance on the organizational capacity of the companies operators rely on. FEDA also published a FEDA Gold Award spotlight Q&A in which Yaz describes the ERP rollout, the second warehouse, and employee development efforts at Chef’s Deal.
Additional information about the award and related company news is available through Chef’s Deal on Instagram.
The Chef’s Deal Restaurant Equipment Store is a commercial kitchen and restaurant supply dealer serving Nashville, the surrounding areas, and markets across Tennessee and nearby regions. The company provides restaurant and kitchen equipment, commercial refrigeration, commercial ice machines, cooking equipment, commercial kitchen hoods, walk-in refrigeration, restaurant furniture, commercial dishwashers, and storage and transport solutions, representing more than 400 manufacturers. It offers free consultation, layout, and design services, a price match guarantee, financing and leasing options, local delivery with its own fleet of trucks, and shipping across the U.S. continental market.
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For more information about Chef’s Deal Restaurant Equipment, contact the company here:
Chef’s Deal Restaurant Equipment
Matthew Yaz
+1 (877) 254-5449
info@chefsdeal.com
708 Dickerson Pike, Nashville, TN 37207
1155 Haley Rd, Murfreesboro, TN 37129
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