ARCO Design/Build has named Brian Shoop Director of Process Engineering for its Food & Beverage business, adding a 16-year industry veteran to anchor the firm's turnkey design-build offering for food manufacturing and processing clients.
Shoop joins from Gray, where he served as Vice President leading that firm's process engineering practice. His specialization centers on asset lifecycle management — designing facilities and processes that extend equipment life, protect structural integrity, and guard against contamination across a plant's operating life, key concerns for food manufacturers facing increasingly stringent safety and uptime expectations.
What the Hire Signals
For food and beverage manufacturers, the distinction between a design-build firm that coordinates outside process engineers and one that houses that expertise internally is a meaningful operational difference. ARCO President Aaron Weir framed the value proposition plainly: "At ARCO, that expertise lives under the same roof as the team that builds the plant, which means our clients get a single accountable partner and a smoother path from concept to production."
Shoop echoed the speed argument, noting that every facility project is backstopped by a product launch or a retail capacity commitment. "ARCO's delivery model is engineered for speed," he said, "and by putting process design inside that same model, we can take clients from concept to production faster than the traditional approach allows." That pitch lands in an environment where food manufacturers are under persistent pressure to compress commissioning timelines without compromising food safety standards.
Cold Storage Roots, Manufacturing Move
The hiring reflects a deliberate move up the food supply chain for ARCO. The firm has spent more than 30 years building cold storage and distribution infrastructure — the downstream end of the food supply chain — and is now positioning its Food & Beverage business to serve the upstream manufacturing and processing facilities where product is actually made. With more than 50 offices and 1,800 associates nationally, ARCO has the footprint to pursue that expansion across multiple regions simultaneously.
Shoop's first public appearance in the new role is slated for the International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting, July 26–29, 2026, in New Orleans. He will participate in a roundtable panel on asset lifecycle management in food manufacturing, examining how operators determine optimal equipment and facility lifespans while maintaining food safety — a topic squarely in the wheelhouse of convenience-channel foodservice operators and the manufacturers who supply them.
For c-store operators and the foodservice suppliers and cold chain partners that serve the channel, ARCO's expanded capability is a signal that design-build firms are consolidating process engineering in-house to compete for complex food manufacturing projects — compressing the timeline between facility concept and first product run.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
