Our History

Sea Hawks are relentless predators. Our prey are threats to food safety.

Our story began in 1968 when our first Sea Hawk, Jon Aneson, worked at The Manor Restaurant in New Jersey under the tutelage of owner Harry Knowles, a visionary who continues to hold claim to being the largest independent banquet operator in America.

A WWII fighter pilot, Harry tested and used restaurant innovations ahead of their time. In 1965, he installed the first multi-floor conveyer dishwashing system at The Manor to ensure the reliability of outstanding dishware results to better serve his guests. A stickler for value and reliability, Harry still has this dishwashing system and he and his team continue to innovate in order to delight their guests.

Jon has a lifetime of hospitality experiences. Besides a fifty year friendship with Harry, Jon spent five years working in every job at The Manor, several years managing restaurants for Dick Berry and the Horn Family, earned a business management degree from Rutgers, spent a decade owning and operating restaurants in the greater Princeton area, and then developed a consulting practice, designing and building over 70 restaurants from NYC, Philadelphia, to the Jersey Shore and in Florida from Sarasota to South Beach.

While Jon worked at Gino’s, a regional hamburger chain, working a full-time schedule and earning his degree, he learned about the hassles of daily soda gun and fountain dispenser calibration and maintenance. He was destined to design a revolutionary solution to these problems.

Jon gathered together other professionals with similarly deep experience to identify and validate the most sustainable food safety innovations for the food service industry that will reduce operational, regulatory, and compliance costs. The work of the Sea Hawk Round table is facilitated with input from seasoned colleagues in the Restaurant Facilities Management Association, the Food Safety Summit and the National Restaurant Association.

Today our R&D Team is led by Joseph Sher, Ray McCausland, Rich Wilkins, Jim Schlueter of Dema Engineering, James Menoutis of Quantum, former NJ State Food Safety Director, Richard Ritota, and Teton Data Biomedical Reference Analyst, Gary Christopher.

Our work continues, enhanced by continued collaboration with Harry Knowles and other important colleagues, all sharing his vision of innovation, value and results. Special thanks to:

Our R&D Team