Multiplex Brand Guidelines: A Drink Dispenser Brand From Manitowoc to Welbilt and Ali Group

A beverage brand inside a kitchen-equipment group.

Multiplex makes the equipment behind the soft-drink fountain and the beer tap: remote chillers, carbonators, ice and beverage dispensers, drop-in units, towers and complete beverage systems. Its customers, by its own description, include quick-service restaurants, cinemas, convenience stores and casual-dining chains. It does not trade as a free-standing company. Multiplex is one of the brands of Welbilt, the kitchen-equipment group that has belonged to Italy’s Ali Group since 2022, and it shares its website with a sister brand, McCann’s, which makes carbonation systems.

Its modern history is that of its owners. A profile of Manitowoc Beverage Equipment in the AECinfo building-products directory says The Manitowoc Company bought SerVend in 1997 and Multiplex in 2000, and in 2002 combined the two brands’ plants at the SerVend plant, which it describes as 155,000 square feet of manufacturing and research space. The International Directory of Company Histories, in its 2004 entry on Manitowoc, places SerVend International at Sellersburg, Indiana, and calls it a maker of ice and beverage dispensers. Manitowoc, a Wisconsin company better known for cranes and ships, already owned an ice-machine business, Manitowoc Ice, the same directory records.

The brand’s address today is New Albany, Indiana, a few miles south of Sellersburg on the Ohio River, according to its website. Multiplex calls itself a global manufacturer of cooling and dispense equipment for the beverage industry, and its website offers a country selector covering markets across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania.

From Manitowoc Foodservice to Welbilt.

Multiplex changed owners without being sold. In March 2016, English Wikipedia records, The Manitowoc Company completed a tax-free spin-off of its foodservice equipment business, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as Manitowoc Foodservice and was then renamed Welbilt, Inc. The cranes stayed with Manitowoc; the ice machines, ovens, fryers and beverage brands, Multiplex among them, went with Welbilt, whose headquarters were at New Port Richey, in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

The new owner rebuilt its brand family. In a release dated 15 May 2017 and republished on the Multiplex website, Welbilt said it would show new logos for its product brands at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago that month, following its change of corporate identity in February. Each logo used a new shape, a triangle carrying the Welbilt “W,” and a colour code for four product categories: blue for storing, red for cooking, purple for holding, displaying and serving, and navy for ice and dispensing brands, the group to which Multiplex belongs. Welbilt said the colours were meant to follow the workflow of a kitchen. Its chief executive, Hubertus Muehlhaeuser, said the company had moved from 23 brands to 12 core brands.

Products and awards in those years appear in the brand’s own news archive. In February 2018 Multiplex republished the National Restaurant Association’s list of 2018 Kitchen Innovations awards, which included its FreshBlender, a self-service unit that combines refrigeration, ice making, blending and dispensing in one cabinet. In March 2019 the brand said its British team had been named supplier of the year for 2018 by Innserve, a drinks dispense service company, to which it said it had supplied beer coolers and parts for more than 20 years. In August 2021 it presented CRAFTtap, a stainless-steel tap for carbonated soft drinks that can be mounted on a tower or a wall.

Design and documentation.

Beverage dispensing makers sell to two very different counters. In a pub or bar, the visible parts are the font on the bar top and the tap handles fixed to it, which usually carry the brewer’s branding while the equipment maker’s name sits on the hardware underneath. In a quick-service restaurant, the visible part is the post-mix tower or self-serve dispenser, where drink brands and, more and more, touchscreens take over the front panel.

Most of the machinery is out of sight, so the makers explain it on paper. Catalogues and spec sheets lean on cutaway diagrams of coolers, carbonators and insulated beer lines, on line drawings and wiring diagrams, and on photographs of keg cellars and cold rooms where kegs, gas cylinders and couplers are connected. The literature is written for installers, service technicians and distributors as much as for the owner of the bar.

The trade meets at shows. The National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago gathers foodservice equipment, including fountain dispensers and ice machines; BrauBeviale in Nuremberg covers brewing and the wider beverage supply chain; and the Craft Brewers Conference in the United States brings draught-system suppliers face to face with brewers. Makers also name certifications, audits and sustainability ratings in their own newsrooms, as Lancer does with its ISO certificates.

Ownership often runs through larger groups. Lancer has been part of the Japanese refrigeration maker Hoshizaki since 2006, according to Hoshizaki’s corporate history, and Cornelius went to Berkshire Hathaway when the British engineering group IMI agreed to sell it in 2013, according to English Wikipedia; its website now says it is powered by Marmon Foodservice Technologies. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker and marks what rests on the company’s own word.

A navy brand in the Welbilt family.

The last change of ownership came in 2022. On 29 July that year Foodservice Equipment Reports reported that the Ali Group had completed its acquisition of Welbilt, just over a year after the two companies agreed to merge, and that Welbilt’s shares had stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The Ali Group named Kevin Clark chief executive of Welbilt, responsible for a portfolio that the magazine listed as including Frymaster, Garland and Multiplex, among others. English Wikipedia adds that Manitowoc Ice was sold to Pentair as part of the deal, to meet competition concerns.

Multiplex kept its own management inside the group. On 2 September 2022 the same magazine reported that Welbilt had promoted Mark Smith, until then vice president and managing director of Multiplex, to president of the brand, responsible for its day-to-day running. The Multiplex website now describes the brand as Welbilt’s and lists it alongside sister names such as SerVend, Crystal Tips, Icecore and McCann’s. Its registered slogan is “Refreshing The Experience,” and its home page says a single dispenser can offer 16 beverage selections with up to eight flavour enhancements.

The name needs care. Multiplex is also the name of an Australian construction group, of a German maker of radio-controlled models, and of the cinema format, and none of them is connected with the beverage brand. Its website is multiplexbeverage.com, and its service pages carry the name of KitchenCare, Welbilt’s aftermarket parts and service brand.

For a design guide, Multiplex shows a brand whose identity is set by its parent: its colour comes from a category code, navy for ice and dispensing, rather than from a history of its own. Compare Manitowoc, the crane maker that owned Multiplex from 2000 until the 2016 spin-off, and Cornelius, another maker of soft-drink and beer dispensing equipment. For this guide we use a navy, a near-black night blue and a soda blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Multiplex’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.