Due North partners with operators to shape the future of smart refrigeration

Due North has long been known for reliable coolers and freezers. While they are certainly prepared for the next wave of innovation and technology, Due North remains focused on operational efficiency and reliability.

A few years ago, I was talking to Due North’s Randy Skyba about glass door coolers and freezers. “Nobody cares much about the coolers and freezers in a micro market — until they go out of order,” Skyba said. “Then, it is a crisis.”

For this episode of Vending & OCS Nation, I spoke with Sean McGrann, chief commercial officer at Due North. He is excited about his role at Due North and is enjoying the concept of partnering with operators to help them meet their unattended retail needs.

When it comes to technology — think smart coolers — Due North is playing a major role. They provide refrigeration while multiple technology partners add payment devices, cameras, scales and every other bit of technology that is required to make a smart cooler happen.

Looking ahead to the future, McGrann said that AI will continue to be important and that anyone who is not leveraging AI to the best of their ability is going to be passed up.

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No time to listen? Prefer to read? Here is an edited podcast transcript:

Bob Tullio: Welcome to Automatic Merchandiser’s Vending & OCS Nation, the podcast for the convenience services industry, produced by Endeavor Business Media, a division of Endeavor B2B.

Due North has a great equipment reputation. I’ve talked to people like Steve Closser from Translucent LLC, Ryan McWhirter from 365 Retail Markets, Steve Orlando from Fixturelite, and all these folks say that you can really count on Due North for reliability. It is a quality product.

But, I wanted to get to the bottom of what Due North is all about. So, when I had an opportunity to talk to Sean McGrann, chief commercial officer at Due North, I couldn’t pass it up. So, I sat down with Sean, and the first thing I asked him to do was talk about the history and the structure and clear up all the names — Due North, Minus 40, QBD.

Here’s Sean McGrann.

Sean McGrann: Minus 40 started 35 years ago. Julian Attree is the original founder. What it started as was a freezer company. And so, his goal was to build the best glass-door merchandising freezer on the market. And so, really from the start, that was where the business got going. And so, with that, came sole focus on operational efficiencies, reliability.

Doing things at a freezer temperature that’s highly reliable is a challenge. Temperatures are much harsher, [and] ambient plays a big effect on it. And so, when we naturally launched a line of coolers, it was off the back of a freezer, and so highly, highly reliable product. And that’s kind of what’s become synonymous with the micro market world.

And so, what happened was, four years ago, private equity — through an investment — came in and bought both Minus 40 and QBD, put the two organizations together, and that’s what formed Due North.

And so, I’ll throw another curveball at you. Within the last two months, we have actually sold the organization to another private equity group called Mill Point [Capital]. And so, Mill Point has an investment that they had previously owned. The parent company, similar to Due North, is called AeriTek, and they own two large brands.

One that is in play for micro market is Imbera. And so, they are produced out of Mexico, so single-door coolers, freezers, some very similar products in nature to Minus 40 and QBD. And then they also own a food service brand called Torrey that’s also manufactured in Mexico. So very, very recent changes, and certainly, for micro market operators, I would think is very relevant that Minus 40 brand and Imbera brand are being brought together and really providing the best of both worlds to a micro market operator.

Bob Tullio: So, you came on board at a very dynamic time. No question about that.

Sean McGrann: A lot of change, right? Both through the industry as well as for the organization. And so that’s really — when I joined the organization back in January, the entire view was to help really kind of bring this organization into the next phase of growth and really find opportunities for us to partner with operators, retailers, brands, to go help and execute their strategic growth plans by allowing us to kind of shine. Where we shine best is, you know, again, partnering with companies to help them go execute.

So, certainly a lot of change this year as we move forward into 2026 and excited about what the future holds. But, exciting stuff, right? Both in the market itself — with the advent of smart coolers and a lot of technology coming into play. You have AI, you have camera vision, you have scales, RFID, you name it. It touches both our coolers and freezers, and we’re kind of at the epicenter of where technology is going — both where it’s been as well as where is it going in the future.

Bob Tullio: Sean, tell me a little bit about your background.

Sean McGrann: Sure. So, I’ve been in commercial refrigeration for my entire career in North America. And so, most of that has been on the sales, customer service and marketing side, but I have also worked… I understand refrigeration is a critical element for whether it’s an operator, a retailer or a brand to be successful to merchandise and sell their products.

The world of brands and the world of micro market operators is a new one and it’s exciting. What I have found about the vending world and micro market world is, it is a hard group of entrepreneurs. They work very, very tirelessly to go execute and make sure that their locations are fully merchandised. Things look as good as they possibly can. Products are fresh, constantly changing and evolving to ensure that they’re keeping up with consumer tastes and desires.

And it’s been a lot of fun to work with our partners across the industry to really start to grow and evolve and learn more about the market.

Bob Tullio: Tell me a little bit about your corporate culture, your mission statement.

Sean McGrann: Yeah. So, I think both … you’re talking QBD and Minus 40, it’s kind of interesting, pairing those two businesses together. From the outside, when I was joining the organization, I would say, you know, both produce single-door, double-door glass display coolers.

Coming into the organization, I found that that couldn’t be further from the truth. QBD was really a beverage product. Largest customer is Pepsi. Where you would see a branded cooler — that’s typically where QBD is.

Minus 40 got their start on the freezer side of things. So, working with brands like Dryers ice cream, Haagen Dazs — some of the biggest and largest ice cream manufacturers — that’s where Minus 40 started. And so, there really wasn’t a lot of overlap.

Bringing the two organizations together — and I think both have a deep history of one, driving innovation as it relates to refrigeration, but two, is partnering with customers to take care of their unique needs — and so, I think that’s really carried over in the DNA.

When Due North got put together, you know, what was previously a private ownership and family at QBD and then private ownership at Minus 40. That DNA of partnering with customers and driving innovation — and coming up with unique solutions through refrigeration — ultimately is who the organization is. And that comes through.

You know, as the advent of smart coolers has come into play, I think we’re in a really good position to help operators, you know, find the right solution for them depending upon what they’re trying to do. And so, I think the organization, it’s very nimble, fast moving, creative and ultimately is looking to partner with our customers to solve those needs.

Bob Tullio: Tell me about Idea to Aisle.

Sean McGrann: Ultimately, it’s really the organization — that that’s our process, right? So it is sitting down with a with a customer, coming up with what unique solution we can provide to solve an issue that they have. And so, whatever that idea may be, whether it’s a branded unit, whether it’s got technology in it, whether it’s a specific size, color, shape, but ultimately is developing a unique solution for them and being able to bring it to their location — at scale. That’s really what we come up with. And then ultimately driving it to be a highly reliable product. So albeit, Aisle really represents our process and really represents kind of our ethos in servicing our customers.

Bob Tullio: So, it’s really all about that fundamental concept of meeting the customers’ needs, finding out what they want and delivering it to them.

Sean McGrann: Yeah, I think ultimately, we recognize that any unit we put out in the field —whether it’s a cooler or freezer — has to be extraordinarily reliable, right? If a unit goes down in a market environment, they are now no longer selling products, right? They are not able to operate and function the way that their businesses were intended and designed to run. And so, it starts with us developing a highly, highly reliable product to maximize uptime to ensure that ultimately, they don’t have a unit that goes down on a Saturday at nine o’clock at night or on a Monday morning at 8 a.m. when they’re getting a rush, ultimately that that thing is going to run and operate for them. So that’s where it all starts is — the reliability. And ultimately, we recognize for them to be successful, the products that they merchandise in our units have to be fresh. They’ve got to be visible, and they’ve got to be accessible.

Bob Tullio: When we talk about technology and Due North, are we just talking about refrigeration, or does it go beyond that?

Sean McGrann: So, there’s, I mean, when we look at technology, it’s kind of, split it into, into two functions, really. One is, as we’ve seen the advent of smart coolers, you have payment devices, you now have cameras, embedded cameras into the coolers and freezers. You have scales and you have RFID. So various forms of technology.

Now that’s none of the stuff that we develop. And so, we took a stance long, long ago that we’re not the experts as it relates to those products and those technologies. However, we’re going to partner with those companies to help them figure out — how do you integrate all that technology into a unit, make it a smart cooler, and do it at scale — and be highly, highly reliable.

And so, we’ve taken a stance to be technology agnostic. So, we will partner with those companies. I mean, there’s a lot of really exciting, unique things being developed, whether it’s more on an entrepreneurial basis or large-scale organizations that are really driving a lot of innovation. We’re partnering with, you know, all of them on a global basis to incorporate their technology into our units. So, that’s kind of how we look at, you know, the smart cooler world.

But then we look at refrigeration, anything that touches refrigeration, we own that. And so, whether that’s smart controllers, whether that’s IOT enabled units, whether it’s embedding AI into it — to figure out, you know, when is a unit going to go down? Can I pre-plan it so that instead of it being a surprise and it being a major, major cost to me, can I pre-plan that a couple of weeks out to be able to schedule maintenance to come in and work on that unit well before it ever goes down? And so, we own that technology, and drive that, anything that really touches the refrigeration side of it.

We feel like our expertise and our knowledge and background is really at its core, the refrigeration technology. And so that’s what we drive. That’s what we innovate. That’s what we have our engineers. That’s what we spend our time on is looking for what’s ahead of us and what is most effective and what helps an operator ultimately, right? What’s most valuable.

Bob Tullio: Operators have been known to use bottling company supplied, glass-door coolers — probably QBDs, in most cases — as their micro market solution for refrigeration. I know that the designers out there say it’s a horrible idea. It obviously makes economic sense for some. What is your take on it? Why is it a bad idea from your perspective?

Sean McGrann: I mean, I think ultimately, it’s, depending upon your situation, right? Getting a free unit — for somebody that’s just starting, starting in the world… I mean, these represent — a single-door, double-door, triple-door, cooler, freezer represents uh a significant investment. And so, starting out, maybe that’s the path to go, but ultimately, you know, like anything else, nothing’s free in this world, right?

And so that comes with uh, some attachments, and that comes with … you’re locked into who, whatever particular brand is providing that. So, it limits your flexibility in terms of what you can merchandise based on what your unique situation is.

And so, we have found, as folks’ kind of get further into the business, is they want control. They want flexibility to be able to merchandise what they believe is best for their customers, not having kind of the handcuffs of being told what do they have to merchandise, what do they have to hold in those units. And so, I think ultimately it’s about freedom and it’s about choice.