Origin Story: Martin Brower's Global Expansion

Like many adults, McDonald’s brings the Reyes brothers right back to their childhood. In the 1990s when the opportunity came to acquire a McDonald’s distributor, they were excited to partner with a brand in which they had total faith and respect.

In 1998, Reyes Holdings acquired Martin Brower and began its long-standing relationship with the iconic restaurant chain McDonald’s. After working together for years, both the Reyes brothers and McDonald’s wanted to grow their partnership and waited for an opportunity to arise. Keystone Foods, owned at the time by a Brazilian company, Marfrig, was the perfect opportunity for Reyes Holdings to grow its business with McDonald’s.

We learned a lot during this time and took whatever we thought was working best back to our entire operation.

Chris & Jude Reyes Founders and Co-Chairmen, Reyes Holdings

To expand its international reach Martin Brower acquired Keystone Foods in 2012. Prior to the acquisition, Martin Brower served restaurants in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama and Ireland. Following the acquisition, they added the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, and later added Singapore.

At the time of the Keystone acquisition, Chris and Jude Reyes said, “We are proud of our relationship with McDonald’s and believe that this acquisition demonstrates the mutual respect and commitment between our two companies. We welcome the opportunity to service the customers in the tremendous markets associated with this acquisition.”

With the Keystone acquisition, Martin Brower acquired many of McDonald’s biggest markets and became the largest supplier to McDonald’s restaurants in the world. “McDonald’s is one of the most loved and recognizable brands in the world, and we wanted to expand our partnership with them as much as possible,” said Duke Reyes, CEO, Reyes Holdings.

Keystone brought with it 4,000 new employees from vastly distinct cultures and operations. With this change and rapid expansion, Martin Brower had to quickly adapt and become more strategic and agile to manage complex operations. Chris and Jude Reyes took this as an opportunity to gain experience from their new international markets and expressed that, “In business, you have to keep growing and adapting. We learned a lot during this time and took whatever we thought was working best back to our entire operation.”

The Reyes brothers expanded the business greatly with the acquisition of Keystone Foods, but they were not satisfied to stop there. In 2018, Martin Brower acquired Golden State Foods distribution assets that served 3,900 McDonald’s restaurants and 365 Chipotle locations…an incredible story for another day!

Fast forward to 2023…Martin Brower now services 18 countries and has over 13,000 employees worldwide. In addition to McDonald’s, they proudly provide supply chain solutions for many of the biggest restaurant brands in the world including Chick-fil-A and Chipotle and growth is part of their DNA!