Former Monty's Pizza owner tumbles into top sales position

RIVER CLUB — Some people have a beverage of choice.

Randy Montgomery has a cup of choice, instead.

The River Club resident’s cupboards are stocked full of Ohio State logo Tervis Tumblers in all shapes and sizes.

“There are a few others, but that pretty much takes up most of our space,” he said with a laugh. “I guess the best/worst part of it that I had them before I started to work for Tervis Tumblers.”

Montgomery joined the Tervis team as the national sales manager just more than a year ago, after he and his wife Cindy sold their restaurant, Monty’s Pizza.

He’d had more than 20 years in sales experience before he and Cindy moved to Florida in 1997 and decided to follow their dream to open their pizzeria. At that time, the couple quickly realized their vision would fit well in the community, and soon they were working feverishly, designing the restaurant and its menu from the ground up.

“My father had owned a couple of pizza restaurants, and he had all the recipes,” Montgomery said. “We used a lot of his recipes to start up the business and then developed some of our own.”

They didn’t intend to leave the business, but a buyer approached them with a lucrative offer, and they sold the restaurant in 2007.

“We had developed a very successful business,” Montgomery said. “The timing was right.”

After selling, Randy Montgomery began scouting different opportunities. He began looking for well-respected companies that may need his services.

He found his ideal in his own kitchen cabinets.

“The strange part was Tervis Tumbler was No. 1 on the list,” Montgomery said. “It was one of those things, and I said, ‘If I had my choice of people to work for (that’s who it would be).’”

About that time, an opening in the sales department had become available. Montgomery applied and was hired for the post. He started in February 2008 and now oversees the company’s wholesale division.

Despite a sluggish economy, the privately owned business has experienced significant growth over the last year. Montgomery has been largely responsible for that growth, increasing the sales representative team from one group with 26 people to seven groups with 93 reps across the country.

“Managing people and accounts — that’s where my background was,” Montgomery said. “Running a restaurant is no different than running a sales organization. You have to make sure the customers are taken
care of.”

Montgomery’s newfound responsibilities also have allowed him to feed his love for travel. While there isn’t usually much time for site seeing during the national and regional trade shows he attends, Montgomery makes a point to try new restaurants or to follow well-known chefs at the locations he visits.

“That’s the fun part,” he said. “Being in the restaurant business, you also become a foodie. You get to the point where you enjoy going out to other businesses.”

And although Tervis Tumbler already offers tumblers with college team logos, over the last six months, it has acquired licensing to sell tumblers for Major League Baseball and the National Football League. The move, Montgomery said, puts the company in a strategic position to move forward.

“It’s a big part of the business out there,” he said.

The company already sells more than six million tumblers annually, Montgomery said.

Contact Pam McTeer at [email protected].