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Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: WILLIAM W. ‘BILL’ LOVETTE
Lovette was Sauer Brands’ executive chairman and interim CEO in 2019, when Charlotte, North Carolina-based Falfurrias Capital Group purchased Richmond-based family-owned spice company C.F. Sauer. He then made way for Martin Kelly, who became president and CEO of the renamed Sauer Brands later that year. However, as of January, Lovette is back as CEO at […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: VINCE SHEEHY IV
Sheehy carries on his father’s legacy as an auto dealer, manning the second largest dealership group in Virginia and No. 31 in the nation. His father, Vincent Sheehy III, founded Sheehy Ford in Maryland in 1965 as a suburban business near the newly built Capital Beltway. After graduating from Dickinson College, receiving an MBA from […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: WATT R. FOSTER JR.
In 1989, Watt Foster Jr. bought Foster Fuels from his father, the late Watt R. “Bobby” Foster Sr. The younger Foster marks the third generation to run the family business, which was founded in 1921. In June, Foster was named one of 11 winners of Ernst & Young’s 2023 Entrepreneur of the Year Mid-Atlantic Award. […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: REID A. BROWN
What began in 1919 as a bottling operation for cherry cola is now a major beverage-distribution business delivering more than 5 million cases of domestic and craft beers, ciders, seltzers and nonalcoholic beverages annually. Reid Brown is among the fourth generation to run Brown Distributing, joining the family business in 2006. His brother, Jason Brown, […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: TING XU
A Shanghai native, Xu graduated from Old Dominion University and settled in Richmond in 1989. She was working as a computer programmer for the state health department in 1993 when she started a small decorative flag venture in her garage, investing $20,000. Established in part to provide work for her parents, who had been engineers […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: STEVEN C. ‘STEVE’ SMITH
Smith is carrying on his family’s legacy at the helm of K-VA-T, the Southwest Virginia operator of Food City supermarkets. His father, Jack C. Smith, grew the K-VA-T empire from a single Piggly Wiggly store opened in Grundy in 1955. Steve Smith joined the family business after graduating from James Madison University in 1979, becoming […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: GEORGE L. HOLM
Performance Food Group’s leader since 2008, Holm has worked for more than 40 years in the food service distribution industry. The Goochland-based corporation was ranked No. 91 on the 2023 Fortune 500 list, with $47.19 billion in revenue reported in fiscal year 2022, up from $30.39 billion in 2021. After holding leadership roles with Sysco, […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: ROBERT S. ‘BOBBY’ UKROP
Ukrop’s name is synonymous with his family’s former Virginia grocery chain that opened in 1937 and was purchased in 2009 by Dutch retail conglomerate Ahold. In recent years, Ukrop rebooted one of the Ukrop’s stores’ most beloved features: its line of prepared foods. Not long after the sale of the grocery chain, he and his […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: KEVIN MURPHY
It’s been an eventful year for the North American subsidiary of U.K. plumbing and heating products distributor Ferguson, which saw its revenues jump from $22.8 billion in 2021 to $28.6 billion in 2022. In September 2022, the company, which does almost all its business in North America, announced a collaboration with automaker Ford in which […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: ROBERT A. ‘BOB’ ARCHER
It’s fitting that Archer lists running as a hobby, noting that he’s completed 13 marathons. Archer’s entire life seems like a marathon toward leading his family business, beginning with earning a business degree from Virginia Tech in 1969, followed immediately by military service with the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty) and a […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: CHARLES E. TYSON
This year started out slower for LL Flooring, with sales declining by 13.7% — from $279 million in the first quarter of 2022 to $240.7 million in the same quarter this year. Tyson, who has headed the flooring company formerly known as Lumber Liquidators since 2020, said during an earnings call that the period has […]
Retail | Wholesale | Food | Beverage 2023: MICHAEL SEVER
Sever, a longtime Hershey employee, was named plant manager of the candymaker’s Stuarts Draft manufacturing facility last year. He had previously worked at the facility, which produces nut-based candies like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Almond Joy, as its site operations leader. The plant, which opened in 1982, is the second largest of Hershey’s seven […]
