Richard B. Cohen

Last updated

Richard B. Cohen
Born1952 (age 7172)
NationalityAmerican
Education University of Pennsylvania (BS)
Known forOwner of C&S Wholesale Grocers
TitleChairman and Chief Product Officer of Symbotic [1]
SpouseJan Cohen
Children3
ParentLester H. Cohen (father)

Richard B. "Rick" Cohen (born 1952) is an American billionaire and the owner of C&S Wholesale Grocers (C&S), a wholesale grocery supply company in the United States. He is also the chairman and chief product officer of Symbotic, an artificial intelligence-enabled robotics company. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Richard Cohen was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1952 to Norma and Lester Cohen. [3] [4] In 1970, he graduated from the Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts and then in 1974, he graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree economics, concentrating in accounting.

Career

In 1974, Cohen began working at the family company, C&S Wholesalers in Worcester, Massachusetts, which was co-founded by his grandfather, Israel Cohen, in 1918. After a three-week union strike that nearly shuttered the business, he persuaded his father to move the company to Brattleboro, Vermont. [5]

In 1989, Cohen took control of C&S after his father retired and in 2003, he moved the company headquarters to Keene, New Hampshire. [5] As the food distribution business is very low margin and customer retention is critical, [5] C&S has been able to attain efficiencies - less than 2 percent of the orders processed have errors or omissions - by using performance incentives combined with self-managed teams of workers who are responsible for assembling customer orders thereby eliminating costly supervisors. [5]

Cohen is also the founder of Symbotic,a robotics warehouse automation company. [6] As of 2021 Symbotic's artificial intelligence-enabled platform was used by C&S, Walmart, Target, Albertsons, and other large retailers. [2] [7]

In December 2021, Symbotic announced plans to go public through a merger with a SPAC sponsored by SoftBank in order to accelerate its push into warehouse automation. [8]

Philanthropy

In 2001, The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College was renamed after the Cohens in thanks of their financial support. [3]

Personal life

Cohen is married to Jan Cohen, executive producer of the Kaddish Project, a musical oratorio on genocide; the couple have three children. [5]

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References

  1. "Rick Cohen, Chairman and Chief Product Officer". Symbotic.
  2. 1 2 Feldman, Amy (December 13, 2021). "Meet The Billionaire Robot Overlord Reinventing Walmart's Warehouses". Forbes . Archived from the original on March 28, 2022.
  3. 1 2 "History and Mission". Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Keene State College. Archived from the original on March 28, 2022.
  4. Tablet Magazine: "The Jewish Billionaire No One's Heard Of" by Adam Chandler, August 5, 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Bloomberg: "Hidden Billionaire Cohen Hauls Fortune in Unmarked Trucks" by Brendan Coffey and Zohair Siraj, August 5, 2013; accessed May 3, 2014.
  6. "Walmart Backed Supply Chain Company Symbotic Gets SPAC Deal: What Investors Should Know". Business Insider. December 13, 2021. Archived from the original on June 12, 2022.
  7. Robbie Whelan (September 20, 2016). "Fully Autonomous Robots: The Warehouse Workers of the Near Future" . The Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on December 9, 2016.
  8. Podder, Sohini; Yasmin, Mehnaz (December 13, 2021). Dwivedi, Vinay; Kuber, Shailesh (eds.). "SoftBank SPAC to take Walmart-backed Symbotic public in $5.5 bln deal". Reuters. Archived from the original on October 15, 2023.