National Equipment Vice President Mike Swann, left, and President Jade Waligura are excited for the company’s move to its new location in Elm Grove.

WHEELING — As National Equipment President Jade Waligura and Vice President Mike Swann looked over the company’s showroom across from WesBanco Arena in downtown Wheeling, it was a bittersweet sight.

That sight won’t be the same coming soon. After decades in downtown Wheeling, including its current site on 14th Street since 1983, the company is on the move, headed to a new building in Elm Terrace. Yet there’s plenty of excitement that comes with those new digs. Waligura and Swann believe the new headquarters will help catapult the established Wheeling business into its next era.

“We’ve been operating here for 80 years,” Waligura said of the company, which was founded in 1945 and has made its home in some spot in downtown Wheeling that entire time. “But the business has changed. The business has evolved.”

The business began when E. Don Swann, Mike Swann’s grandfather, left National Cash Register to strike out on his own and started National Equipment from the basement of his Warwood home. In the ensuing years, National Equipment continued to grow, moved locations and has become one of the region’s mainstays in restaurant equipment. Waligura said the company is doing “three to four times” the business in restaurant equipment than it was 10 years ago.

Waligura and Swann said there are three main pillars to National Equipment’s business – restaurant equipment, repairing and maintaining that equipment and selling “disposables,” items that will be used and pitched after they’re done. The service aspect of the business has grown significantly in recent years, they said, and is a major part of the reputation the company has built.

In 2018, the company had four or five service technicians working on equipment. It currently employs seven techs in Wheeling, a couple of installers and two more techs in its Morgantown office. Waligura said it is important for National Equipment to handle its own service rather than farm it out to third parties. It builds trust with the customers.

“We probably choose to do business in a little harder way than others,” Waligura said. “We keep it pretty traditional.

“When you buy from National Equipment, we are the one receiving it off the freight truck. We are putting it in the restaurant. We’re test firing it, we’re calibrating it. We’re working with the chef. It’s really kind of a white glove service, start to finish.”

The principles of National Equipment’s approach to business won’t be left behind with the move to Elm Grove, Waligura and Swann said, but there will be plenty new to see when the facility opens. The showroom will now populate just one floor, as opposed to the 14th Street location that houses equipment on several floors. The Elm Grove site will have a test kitchen, where customers choosing between, for example, several models of commercial stoves, can bring in food to cook on each one to see which model best fits their needs.

Another aspect of the new site is the space around it. The Elm Grove location will have a traditional parking lot for customers to use, whether it’s a new restaurant owner, or someone who is baking a ton of Christmas cookies and needs commercial-grade cookie sheets to do it. Those buying equipment will be able to load their new purchases on large trucks with plenty of room to work. Delivering products to the company will get easier.

“The way we designed the building kind of mimics the overall look of Elm Terrace,” Waligura said. “It looks like more of a traditional store. Hopefully, people feel more comfortable coming in and browsing and shopping. But as far as the in-store customer service, nothing is changing.

“We’re keeping the same amount of staffing,” he continued. “We hope that the flow actually improves for the customer shopping experience.”

That experience has been a lot of what has helped National Equipment thrive over eight decades. Swann said it always feels good when long-time customers recognize the family name and equate it with quality products and good work.

“There was an ice cream vendor that came through the neighborhood and he recognized our house,” Swann said. “And he said, ‘You’re Bill Swann’s son. He helped me fix this freezer.’ And then, years later, my daughter tells me she’s out to eat and someone comes up to her and says, ‘Oh, you’re Mike Swann’s daughter.’ It’s just really nice when that happens.”