Parts Town Closes 2026 Scholarship Cycle With $15,000 in Awards

Parts Town has closed out its 2026 Technician Scholarship Award program with $15,000 distributed across 10 scholarships — and crossed a cumulative milestone of more than $100,000 since the program launched in 2022.

The company announced the final 2026 recipients at the CFESA Annual Conference in late September. The timing is no accident: CFESA, the Commercial Food Equipment Service Association, is where independent service companies gather each year, and Parts Town has built its scholarship program around that network.

Five companies took the top honors at the conference itself. Archway Service Group, Hagar Restaurant Service, ICU Mechanical, Montana Food Equipment and Smart Care each received a $1,000 CFESA training scholarship plus a $500 cash prize. That's a $7,500 split across the five — roughly the cost of a single manufacturer certification course per shop.

Five individual technicians received support earlier in the year, recognized at regional meetings:

• Farrell Aughney — C&S Food Equipment Services
• Tristan O'Brian — Star Foodservice Equipment Repair
• Gama Armendariz — Waldinger Group
• Jamie Kellahan — Archway Service Group
• Kyle Smith — Gilette Restaurant Group

What does this actually change for operators?

For restaurant operators, the mechanism here is simple and worth understanding. Parts Town is the largest distributor of OEM parts for commercial foodservice equipment, and it depends on a functioning network of independent repair technicians to install those parts and keep kitchens running. Every dollar the company puts into technician training is a dollar aimed at expanding a labor pool that the industry has struggled to staff.

The shortage is real on both sides of the equation. When a fryer or a walk-in cooler goes down, a restaurant's sales stop with it — and a trained technician who can diagnose the fix quickly is the difference between a one-hour repair and a lost service day. Scholarships that fund CFESA training courses directly target that response time.

Chuck Combs, senior vice president of service and dealer partnerships at Parts Town, framed the investment in workforce terms. "The commercial foodservice industry is strongest when we invest in the people who power it," Combs said. "Through our continued partnership with CFESA, we're proud to provide scholarships that help technicians advance their education, strengthen their skills and grow their careers."

A personal honor alongside the program

The conference brought recognition for Combs as well. He received the Elwood Hawkins Memorial Award at the 2026 CFESA Annual Conference, an honor named for a foundational figure in the foodservice service community. The award landed in the same week his company closed its fifth consecutive scholarship cycle.

At the current pace — roughly $15,000 per year since 2022 — the program has now moved past the $100,000 mark in total giving. That works out to about 70 technicians and service companies supported across five cycles, a modest number against the industry's labor needs but a signal of where a major parts distributor sees its supply chain exposed.

With the 2026 cycle complete, expect Parts Town to reopen the program in 2027, continuing to route training dollars through CFESA's regional and annual meetings.