ARCO Design/Build has hired Brian Shoop as Director of Process Engineering for its Food & Beverage business, folding process design capability directly into the firm's turnkey construction model. For food and beverage manufacturers evaluating new or expanded production facilities, the move means process engineering — historically managed through a separate consultant — now lives inside the same firm that breaks ground and delivers the building.
Shoop comes from Gray, where he served as Vice President leading the process engineering practice. His 16-year career spans facility design, equipment lifecycle management, contamination prevention, and operational readiness for food and beverage manufacturers. He will represent ARCO at the International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting in New Orleans, July 26–29, 2026, presenting on asset lifecycle management and how manufacturers can extend equipment and facility longevity without compromising food safety.
What Operators Should Note
The traditional model for building or expanding a food manufacturing plant involves at least two primary relationships: a process engineer who designs the production flow, and a construction firm that executes the facility build. Coordination gaps between those two parties are a well-documented source of schedule overruns and expensive design revisions late in a project. ARCO's pitch — one accountable partner from concept through commissioning — addresses a pain point that operators in high-growth categories like ready-to-eat, beverage, and refrigerated foods know acutely. As Shoop noted, product launches and retail commitments create hard deadlines that traditional fragmented delivery models can struggle to meet.
ARCO's entry into food manufacturing and processing is a logical upstream extension of its cold storage business. The firm has spent more than 30 years building the refrigerated and frozen distribution infrastructure that moves food from plant to shelf. Expanding into the manufacturing layer gives ARCO coverage across a larger portion of the food supply chain and positions it to capture clients at an earlier stage of facility planning — before a site is selected, before a process layout exists.
What This Signals for Procurement
For operators in active facility planning, this hire is a signal worth tracking. Integrated design-build firms with embedded process engineering are increasingly competing for projects that would previously have gone to a process engineering firm plus a general contractor. That consolidation compresses the vendor list but raises the stakes on partner selection — a single firm controls more variables, which is either a risk reducer or a concentration risk depending on execution. Operators evaluating construction and facilities vendors should ask prospective design-build partners specifically how process engineering staff are integrated into project teams, not just whether the capability exists on an org chart.
The IAFP panel appearance is also worth noting as a procurement signal. Food safety regulatory scrutiny on facility design — particularly around contamination pathways and equipment longevity — has intensified in recent years. Manufacturers who treat process engineering as a construction afterthought are increasingly exposed. Hiring a recognized voice on asset lifecycle management and putting him in front of regulators, industry peers, and potential clients at IAFP is a deliberate positioning move, not just a conference appearance. Operators planning capital projects should align facility design decisions with food safety compliance requirements from the earliest planning stage, a discipline that integrated process engineering is better equipped to enforce. For more on how facility infrastructure decisions intersect with operator growth planning, see related coverage on food manufacturing and supply chain intelligence.
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.
