Pepsi MidAmerica believes in Cape Girardeau’s new business park. The company and the leaders from the City announced on Friday that a customer service center will be constructed at the new Greater Cape Girardeau Business Park.
Construction of this $3.1 million facility should start by the end of the summer for an opening planned for Spring 2015. John Mehner, President of Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce, said the facility will have three different buildings of various sizes plus a fueling station.
“One is an office building, and a place for the sales and route people to work out of, then there is a facility for the trucks and that type of things and there is another one that is for the product, for the vending and the soft drinks and that type of things,” he detailed.
Pepsi MidAmerica will hire seventy-four employees to work at this customer center. There will be several types of jobs available, like office jobs, sales and territorial management positions.
“You can think of it in older terms as a distribution center,” Mehner said. “It’s a center that will have both office staff and salespeople and their route people, so the people that deliver their product.”
According to a press release, Pepsi MidAmerica was considering multiple communities to expand their distribution network and through an extensive analysis they determined Cape Girardeau was best suited to meet their needs.
"Cape Girardeau has long been a great consumer of Pepsi products and now the Pepsi MidAmerica family is proud to have a corporate presence with our customer service center," stated Larry Chambers, Director of Facilities for Pepsi MidAmerica in the release. "The strategic location of the new business park, a strong and capable workforce, and the collaborative spirit of community leaders is exactly what the Crisp family was looking for in its expansion efforts."
Mehner added that this being the first customer service/distribution center will let everybody know that the park is operational and should help them secure some additional tenants in the near future. He said facilities similar to this one would be good to add to the business park.
“I think it’s best suited for distribution type facilities or technology related facilities or light manufacturing facilities. The access to the interstate is very easy right there so that’s key for both bring employees in and out and run trucks in and out,” Mehner said.
Mayor of Cape Girardeau Harry Rediger said the City has been working with Pepsi MidAmerica for the past year to finalize this purchase of the 18 acres that the company will occupy at the business park.
00:44 “We are very excited about Pepsi being our first tenant in our business park,” Rediger added.
Pepsi MidAmerica has it’s headquarters in Marion, Illinois and the franchise includes central and southern Illinois, south-central and southeast Missouri, western Kentucky, western Tennessee, and northeast Arkansas. The company was founded in 1935 by Harry Crisp Sr.and has been led by three generations of the Crisp family since. Today it is the largest privately held Pepsi franchise in the nation.