Jackson WWS Brand Guidelines: A 1925 Cleveland Dishwasher Name Now Owned by Hoshizaki

Cleveland, 1925, by the company’s account.

Jackson WWS makes commercial dishwashers in the United States: flight-type and rack conveyor machines, door-type machines, glasswashers and undercounter units. The letters stand for Warewashing Systems, and the company calls itself Jackson Warewashing Systems on its website.

Its own timeline begins in 1925, when, it says, the Jackson Dishwasher Company was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, by Otto Jackson. The same timeline says the company was bought by Ecolab in 1994, which changed its name to the Jackson Machine Sales Company, or Jackson MSC. Those early steps rest on the company’s account. In 2024 its press releases still described Jackson as “founded in 1925,” and in 2025 the company marked its hundredth year.

Trade press records the later owners. By the early 2000s Jackson belonged to Enodis, the London-based foodservice equipment group: Foodservice Equipment Reports noted in May 2011 that a Manitowoc executive had led Jackson “under Enodis” in 2002 and 2003. In May 2008 the American equipment maker Manitowoc agreed to buy Enodis, Nation’s Restaurant News reported, and by 2011 Jackson MSC was a division of Manitowoc Foodservice, with its team in Barbourville, Kentucky, according to Foodservice Equipment Reports. In that report the range already ran across conveyor, flight, door-type, glasswasher and undercounter machines.

From Manitowoc to Hoshizaki.

On 28 January 2013 Manitowoc announced that it had sold its Jackson warewashing business to Hoshizaki USA Holdings, the American arm of the Japanese foodservice equipment maker Hoshizaki, Foodservice Equipment & Supplies reported that day. Foodservice Equipment Reports described Jackson as based in Barbourville, Kentucky, making conveyor, flight-type and undercounter units, and noted that Hoshizaki’s main North American products had been ice machines, refrigeration and Lancer drinks dispensers, though it had sold warewashing equipment in the US for several years. Manitowoc’s chief executive said the sale reinforced the company’s commitment to its core foodservice business.

Under the new owner the business took its present name. Jackson says the change from Jackson MSC to Jackson Warewashing Systems came with the Hoshizaki purchase, and its legal name appears in its own releases as Jackson WWS, Inc. In 2016, its timeline says, it announced new warehouse space in California as part of a nationwide expansion, a step it calls “Jackson Goes West.” Its website still carries a code of conduct for suppliers issued by the Hoshizaki group.

The company’s releases are now datelined Gray, Kentucky. On 26 March 2024 Jackson announced from there that it had received a 2024 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award from the US Environmental Protection Agency, which its president called “a first-time achievement for Jackson.” The company describes itself in the same release as a “full-line supplier” of commercial dishwashers.

Its current lines, as the website lists them, are undercounters, glasswashers, high-temperature and low-temperature door-types, conveyors and flights. The named machines include the RackStar rack conveyor, the DynaStar door-type and the FlightStar flight machine. The website groups them by market, from hotels, bars and coffee shops to schools, healthcare, correctional facilities and casinos.

The product pages lean on named features rather than images alone. The RackStar, the company says, carries its own Rainbow Rinse and a cleaning system it calls WISR, both presented as trademarks, and the site offers a “Dishmachine Selector” that steers a buyer to a model from a few questions about the kitchen. Its site sends buyers to dealers and sales representatives through a search page; since 2020 its news page has announced a “Rep Group of the Year” chosen from its sales agencies, and in August 2020 it announced that one of its directors had been appointed leader of the FCSI Southeast chapter, the regional branch of the foodservice consultants’ society. Service agents get their own section of the site, with a document archive.

Warewashing and its trade.

Commercial dishwasher makers sell to professional kitchens rather than households. Their catalogues are sorted by how the ware moves: undercounter machines and glasswashers that sit beneath a bar or counter, hood-type or door-type machines that wash one rack at a time, rack conveyors for bigger runs of baskets, and flight-type machines that carry plates on a continuous belt. Hobart and Comenda both organise their ranges in this way on their websites.

The customer lists read like a map of institutional eating. Hobart names restaurants, hotels, hospitals, long-term care, schools and grocery retailers; Comenda adds pastry shops, ships, central kitchens and airline caterers, and says its flight-type machines are built for large canteens, hospitals and inflight catering. The baskets themselves come in standard sizes: Comenda quotes racks of 400 by 400 and 500 by 500 millimetres.

The trade meets at fairs rather than in shops. INTERNORGA, held every year in Hamburg, describes itself as a platform for hospitality and foodservice, with a hall area for kitchen technology and equipment, and plans its 100th edition for March 2027. In Milan, HostMilano is another fixed date; the American trade magazine Foodservice Equipment Reports keeps photo galleries from its 2023 and 2025 editions. Comenda’s own awards page lists an innovation prize from the Rest’Hotel fair in Caen.

Ownership in this sector often runs through large groups. Hobart is a brand of Illinois Tool Works’ food-equipment group; Comenda was the first company of Italy’s Ali Group, which has since gathered further warewashing names. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

A registered promise and a hundred years.

Jackson’s brand speaks in two registers. One is the promise it marks as a registered trademark, “Clean the First Time”, which runs through its product pages and press releases. The other is age: the website headlines its history “Over 100 Years of Innovation!” and the company’s statement of values, Passion, Excellence and Value, opens with “a tradition founded on a passion for designing, engineering, and building.” The home page adds a plainer line, “Dishwashers for Every Commercial Kitchen.”

The tone is informal and American. Market pages use wordplay (“It’s no crime to make the best choice for your establishment,” runs the copy for correctional kitchens), and model names such as RackStar, DynaStar and FlightStar share one suffix across conveyors, door-types and flight machines. Energy efficiency is the brand’s other theme, and the company points to its ENERGY STAR partnership and its 2024 award.

For a design guide, Jackson WWS shows how a long-lived trade name can carry its founding date through several owners, from Enodis to Manitowoc and Hoshizaki, while its base has stayed in Kentucky since at least 2011. Compare the American warewashing name Hobart and the German specialist Winterhalter. For this guide we use a navy, a rinse teal and a plate white with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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