How a Long Island kitchen supplier that started as two-man operation grew into national player

Sam Tell and his son, Neil, started as a two-man team selling small kitchen supplies to restaurants in 1956 in Manhattan’s Bowery District, a cash-and-carry strip for eateries.

Now the operation, The Sam Tell Companies, is a national designer and supplier of commercial kitchens that is commemorating 70 years of business this year, and continuing to grow in sales, reach and employee numbers.

Since 2008 the company has been headquartered in Farmingdale after outgrowing locations in Brooklyn and Queens. In June, it expanded its Bay Shore warehouse space by 70% with a relocation, and it has increased its employee numbers by 68% over the last seven years.

Some of the company’s growth can be attributed to loyalty — among its employees and its clients  — said Marc Tell, chief executive and a third-generation owner.

"It is what we live, eat and breathe every single day," he said. "How can we as a company be of best service to all our valued associates, all of of our stakeholders?" 

The Sam Tell Companies is a design-build firm whose customers are operators of commercial kitchens in restaurants, schools, hotels, stadiums and elsewhere.

“In a perfect world, we would have the opportunity to design a kitchen, specify the equipment, sell the equipment,” said Heather Kogan, chief commercial officer. “And then, ideally, we would get an opportunity to sell the customer everything for front and back of house [in the business], so pots, pans, floor mats, knives and then china, glass, silver, flatware. Anything they would use for the non-food side of the restaurant.”

The Sam Tell Companies recently leased an 85,000-square-foot section of a Bay Shore warehouse at 1724 Fifth Ave. The facility is a relocation from a 50,000-square-foot warehouse less than a half mile away at 59 Spence St., where the company had been since May 2023, said Damien Taylor, director of operations.

Sam Tell's current Bay Shore warehouse is in a section of a 480,000-square-foot building that used to be the Entenmann's bakery headquarters, said Tod Buckvar, managing member of Suffolk County Industrial LLC, the owner of the building.

The relocation was the result of the need for more warehouse space because of an increase in the company’s number of projects and an expansion of the design-build business, Taylor said.

“By increasing the footprint on Long Island, it gives us ... the ability to handle and support more customers within the market area,” he said.

In addition to the Bay Shore warehouse and the 90,000-square-foot Farmingdale headquarters, which also has a warehouse, the company has offices in Manhattan and Philadelphia, with remote employees doing significant business in Florida, Houston and Oakland, California, Tell said. 

Since 2019, the number of employees companywide has increased from 140 to 235 workers, Kogan said.

Over the last 25 years, the company has been pushing growth through the acquisitions of other businesses, including Pennsylvania-based food service operations designer Corsi Associates in 2022 and Deer Park-based Premium Supply Co. in 2016. Sam Tell entered the kitchen design business after buying Manhattan-based Pascoe Jacobs in 2002, Kogan said.

The Sam Tell Companies does not publicly disclose its revenue, but it is “well into the 9 figures and has almost doubled in the last 3 years,” Kogan wrote in an email Thursday.

The company works nationwide, but its “bread and butter” is the New York City restaurant market, she said.

Some Long Island restaurants that have been clients include Rothmann's Steakhouse in East Norwich, Louie's Prime Steak & Seafood in Port Washington, Huntington Crescent Club, Canoe Place Inn & Cottages in Hampton Bays and Captain Bill’s Restaurant & Catering in Bay Shore.

Michael Bohlsen is a Long Island restaurateur whose businesses were serviced by Premium Supply before that company was purchased by Sam Tell in 2016.

Now, Sam Tell is the supplier and installer for all five of the restaurants Bohlsen co-owns, including Prime: An American Kitchen & Bar in Huntington and Tellers: An American Chophouse in Islip.

“Their service is very personable. They react to our needs. They’ve overall been a good partner to us. We keep our relationships with vendors very tight,” Bohlsen said.

Despite its growth, Sam Tell has faced business challenges in recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic that crippled the restaurant industry in cities across the country in 2020.

Tell said the company's sales fell 38% in 2020 and 2021.

"We were saved by the fact that we also do a lot of corporate dining ... we call it workday dining, corporate cafeterias," Tell said.  "We were considered essential and that work did not stop."

During the pandemic, the company also leaned more into selling paper products and disposable cutlery used for takeout orders and managed inventory tightly, Kogan said.

Other business challenges in recent years have included labor issues related to immigration policies, high interest rates and uncertainty over import tariffs enacted in 2025, she said.

“Customers were cautious [over tariffs]," she said. "Every day the news was changing. People weren't sure what it was going to do to price increases, and for a lot of the items we sell, generally there can be a lead time."

Sam Tell raised its prices for clients by the same amount its tariff expenses increased, and clients eventually passed their higher costs on to consumers, Tell said.

Most of the goods the company sells are made in the United States, but a significant portion is imported from Asia, India and Pakistan, he said.

"I am not a big fan of tariffs," he said. "I call them tariff taxes because I believe it's a tax on the working class."

The Trump administration’s wide-ranging tariffs that went into effect last year included a 10% levy applied to imports from Pakistan and India in April, said Alex Durante, senior economist at Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think-tank in Washington, D.C. India’s tariffs increased to 50% in August.

China’s tariffs started at 10% in February 2025, rising to 20% in March and 125% in April, before falling to 30% in May, Durante said.

This past February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck the tariffs down, saying their enactment under an international emergency law was unlawful.

After a global 10% tariff lapsed Friday morning, the administration’s new tariffs ranging from 10% to 12.5% went into effect for about 60 countries, including China, India and Pakistan.