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Dot Foods opened up the doors to its location in Manchester for a media tour at the food redistributor’s facility that is still under construction and located at 600 Manchester Industrial Parkway.

Anthony Soto, Dot Foods Manchester general manager, led the tour through the $50.5 million and 177,000 square-foot facility Thursday, Nov. 30.

While ground officially broke on the facility in August 2022, Soto said Dot Foods Manchester is expected to begin moving cases out by the end of 2023.

Dot Foods Manchester will have about 100 employees when it officially opens its doors, with the majority of employees starting work after the New Year, he said.

“We have done four full days of interviews at least,” Soto said. “I think we had over 500 applications and we haven’t done a single recruiting event.”

When it comes to drivers, Dot Foods has already expanded upon its estimated original need.

“Our driver team, we have 32 today with three more in the pipeline that will start before the end of the year, so we have 35 already,” Soto said. “We were only planning to get to 28, so we are well over our hiring plan.”

“Next year we will add roughly 50 drivers,” Soto added.

One feature of the Manchester Dot Foods location currently under construction is an onsite health clinic for employees and their families.

Soto said the Manchester facility is the first Dot Foods location to have a health clinic built at the same time as the facility.

“It is not acute, acute is not the focus, for injuries and that stuff,” he said. “We want to be able to do that but that is not the intent of it.”

Soto said the idea behind the clinic, which will be operated by Premise Health rather than the company itself, is more to help with overall general health.

“So the focus is more preventive,” he said. “We want folks to come in, utilize this as their primary care and it is for all employees and their families.”

The new facility will also feature an onsite occupational health trainer in addition to those staffed in the clinic.

“We will have a health trainer on site that can help work with employees that have strains and pulls or any of those things,” Soto said. “Not only are they dealing with injured employees, but if they are dealing with somebody that has kind of a weak core or weak muscle group, they will help those folks to improve.”

If the occupational health trainer feels an employee needs to be seen at the health clinic, they will then help them make an appointment, Soto said.

Featuring dry, refrigerated, and frozen warehouse space, an on-site garage and offices, a significant amount of attention has been made to ensure the facility will be able to operate as smoothly as possible once it officially opens.

Soto said the majority of Dot Foods business is currently in dry goods.

“Our split typically ends up being roughly 70% dry, so this is the majority of it but certainly freezer and cooler grow every year,” he said.

One relatively new design for Dot Foods that has been included at the Manchester location involves a loading dock with a better eye towards safety for truck drivers.

“Typically, with our old builds what we would do is you would back up to that door and the trailer wouldn’t enter into the building,” Soto said. “The last four buildings we have built have been this way where the door is automatic. The door goes up, they back through the door and then the dock lowers down and the trailer doors actually open on the inside of the building.”

Soto said only the last four Dot Foods facilities have been built this way.

As a food redistributor, Soto said businesses that have a relationship with Dot Foods can get specifically what they need on their trucks in smaller quantities of specific items.

“Let’s say you order 10 trucks, you have access to our entire product offering of 140,000 different items and you only have to have one relationship,” he said.

“You basically buy what you need for that week and then you do it all over again so you don’t have to invest in the big buildings and all of that stuff,” Soto added. “We just essentially take care of all of it for you.”

Dot Foods is expected to continue with its expansion plan in Manchester, and currently expects to employee more than 200 people within its first three years of operation in the community.