ARCO Design/Build has hired Brian Shoop as Director of Process Engineering for its Food & Beverage business, deepening the firm's in-house technical bench as it pushes further into food manufacturing and processing facility construction.
Shoop joins from Gray, where he led the firm's Process Engineering practice as Vice President across a 16-year tenure. His work has centered on helping manufacturers design production processes and physical plants that maximize operational throughput, product safety, and long-term equipment reliability — with particular emphasis on asset lifecycle management and contamination prevention throughout a facility's operating life.
Single-Source Design Advantage
The hire is central to ARCO's pitch to food manufacturers: a single accountable partner that owns both the process engineering and the construction under one roof. That model compresses the handoff delays that typically occur when a food manufacturer contracts a process engineer separately from a general contractor — a friction point that can push back equipment installation, commissioning, and ultimately product launch timelines.
"In food and beverage, time is everything," said Shoop. "Behind every facility is a product launch, a retail commitment, a customer counting on capacity coming online. ARCO's delivery model is engineered for speed, and by putting process design inside that same model, we can take clients from concept to production faster than the traditional approach allows."
Aaron Weir, President of ARCO Design/Build, framed the strategic logic plainly: process engineering expertise that lives alongside the construction team eliminates the gaps that slow conventional project delivery.
Cold Storage Roots, Manufacturing Expansion
The move into food and beverage manufacturing represents a deliberate step up the supply chain for ARCO. The firm has spent more than 30 years building cold storage and distribution facilities — the back end of the food supply chain. Adding dedicated process engineering capability positions ARCO to pursue the manufacturing and processing plants that produce the product those facilities store and ship.
For foodservice operators, commissary developers, and ghost kitchen builders specifying new production environments, the availability of integrated design-build firms with in-house process engineering represents a faster path from site selection to working kitchen. Consultants specifying food-safe facility builds — where equipment layout, drainage, ventilation, and sanitation systems must be co-engineered from the start — stand to benefit from the consolidated accountability this model offers.
Shoop will represent ARCO at the International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting, July 26–29, 2026, in New Orleans, where he is slated to participate in a roundtable panel titled "Asset Lifecycle Management in Food Manufacturing: Engineering Principles for Equipment and Facility Longevity." The session examines how manufacturers can determine optimal equipment and facility lifespans while protecting food safety — a topic directly relevant to specifiers evaluating long-term cold chain and storage infrastructure investments.
ARCO operates more than 50 offices with over 1,800 associates nationwide and is 100% employee-owned through an ESOP.
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.
