Merchandising Frontiers, Inc. of Winterset has recently been awarded a contract with Universal Studios, Inc., to manufacture the food service carts for Universal’s newest theme park located in Osaka, Japan.
This motion picture and television themed tourist attraction will be based on rides and shows currently operating at Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Florida. The park will also include new rides and shows involving live action, interactive, special effects, and animation productions. The park is expected to open to guests in April of the year 2001.
The themed food carts will provide point-of-sale food items such as popcorn, hot dogs, ice cream, beverages, etc. Merchandising Frontiers, Inc. will design, engineer, fabricate, test, package, ship and supervise the installation and training in Osaka, Japan of the food carts.
Jerry and Janet Mayer, who are native Iowans, founded Merchandising Frontiers, Inc. (MFI) in 1993, after leaving the aerospace industry and moving back to Iowa from southern California. MFI is a custom manufacturer of carts and kiosks for the food service and retail shopping mall industry. MFI has completed many unique projects from retail merchandise kiosks for Wilson’s Leather at airports around the world to bakery delis in Guam.
Other MFI customers include Best Foods, Lipton, Schwan’s’s Food Systems, Sony Development Corp., Colonial Properties (the largest Real Estate Investment Trust in the SE region of the U.S.) and Prime Retail (developer of outdoor outlet malls throughout the U.S.).
Locally, MFI products include the Huskies Booster Cart, Stone Willy’s pizza and Summit sub kiosks at Drake University, a lunch service cart at Mercy Hospital Heart Center, a coffee cart at the Des Moines Play House, Tony’s Pizza carts at several Des Moines schools, “spa” carts at Younkers and various food service carts for local concessionaires at Nollen Plaza, the State Fair, etc.
