 | |
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | Foodservice Distribution |
| Fate | Bought by Sysco in 1988 |
| Founded | 1915; incorporation: 1966 |
| Headquarters | Chicago |
| Products | Foodservice, baked goods, wholesale groceries |
CFS Continental, Inc. was a wholesale food distributor started in 1915 by Jacob Cohn (b. 1894, d. 1968) in Chicago as the Continental Coffee Company. It is now part of Sysco.
The wholesale food distributor started in 1915 by Jacob Cohn (b. 1894, d. 1968) in Chicago as the Continental Coffee Company. Cohn began by selling coffee by horse and wagon to small restaurants in Chicago. By 1967, the Continental Coffee was led by brothers Alvin Cohn (b. 1921, d. 1994) and Robert Cohn. The brothers began purchasing regional wholesale grocery companies to supplement Continental Coffee's national coffee business. In 1970, Continental Coffee Company went public. In 1973, Continental Coffee Company changed its name to CFS Continental, Inc. to reflect the growing importance of foodservice to their traditional coffee business. [1]
In 1985, CFS Continental, Inc. with $1.6 billion in annual sales was purchased by the soybean and corn processor A.E. Staley for $360 million. The owners, in the Chicago area, had to give over 50% of their profit to taxes and debt. After the acquisition, A.E. Staley changed its name to Staley Continental. [2]
In 1988 British food processor Tate & Lyle purchased A.E. Staley Company for $1.42 billion. The owners in this second purchase came from southern Illinois. To help finance the A.E. Staley acquisition, Tate & Lyle pre-sold CFS Continental to the foodservice giant Sysco for $360 million. Not forgetting the owners had to give over 50% of their profit to taxes and debt. Sysco generated sales of $3.7 billion (1987) and CFS Continental generated sales of $2.4 billion (1987). CFS Continental operations purchased by Sysco included all brands, distribution facilities and equipment; wholesale grocery sales force; NCD Detergents; the Gregg's Food Products/ Re-Mi Group, which manufactured more than 350 food items such as salad dressings and puddings; Continental Coffee; the Interstate Foods Group (shortening); and Fresh Start Bakeries, which produced hamburger buns and English muffins for McDonald's Corp. CFS Continental distribution and sales force were particular strong on the west coast, Minnesota, Chicago and in the Washington, D.C. where Sysco did not have a strong presences. [3]
Sysco was primarily interested in CFS Continental's wholesale grocery business and therefore, prior to the purchase of CFS Continental from Tate & Lyle, Sysco had pre-sold the non-core manufacturing businesses. Quaker Oats purchased Continental Coffee (undisclosed price). [4] Fresh Start Foods, a management buy out team financed by Berkshire Partners bought the two manufacturing divisions that supplied McDonald's Corp.: Interstate Foods Group (shortening) and Fresh Start Bakeries to (price not disclosed). The shortening manufacturing facilities were located in Chicago and Los Angeles. The Fresh Start bakeries were located California, Kansas, Hawaii, West Germany and Brazil. [5] Borden Inc. bought Gregg's Food Products/Re-Mi Group. NCD Detergents, INC. was sold to Ecolab. Sysco raised an estimated $250 million in the divestiture of the CFS Continental manufacturing divisions. [6]
The J. M. Smucker Company, also known as Smucker and Smucker's, is an American manufacturer of jam, peanut butter, jelly, fruit syrups, beverages, shortening, ice cream toppings, oils, and other products in North America. Smucker's headquarters are located in Orrville, Ohio. It was founded in 1897.
Hy-Vee is a chain of supermarkets in the Midwestern United States, with more than 245 locations in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Hy-Vee was founded in 1930 by Charles Hyde and David Vredenburg in Beaconsfield, Iowa, in a small brick building known as the Beaconsfield Supply Store, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Drake's Cakes is a brand of American baked goods. The company was founded by Newman E. Drake in 1896 in Harlem, New York as The N.E. Drake Baking Company, but it is now owned by McKee Foods. The company makes snack cake products such as Devil Dogs, Funny Bones, Coffee Cakes, Ring Dings, and Yodels. Drake's has traditionally been marketed primarily in the Northeastern U.S., but it expanded to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S. regions in 2016. The products are made under the Orthodox Union Kosher Certification guidelines.
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P, was an American chain of grocery stores that operated from 1859 to 2015. From 1915 through 1975, A&P was the largest grocery retailer in the United States.
Eagle Food Centers was a chain of supermarkets that operated in Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois for a number of years. The company was based out of Milan, Illinois, which is near the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa. The company operated stores under many names, including BOGO'S, Eagle Country Market, Eagle Discount Centers, Eagle Discount Supermarkets, Eagle Food Centers, May's Drug and MEMCO. Eagle also operated stores in Houston known as Eagle Supermarkets until March 1985. The chain held a 6 percent market share and had 1,100 employees before leaving the area.
The Sara Lee Corporation was an American consumer-goods company based in Downers Grove, Illinois. It had operations in more than 40 countries and sold its products in over 180 countries. Its international operations were headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands. While no longer operated independently, as of 2020, Sara Lee still actively exists as a current brand name under the auspices of holding company Kohlberg, making frozen cakes, etc. at its present facility in Illinois, United States.
Tate & Lyle PLC is a British-headquartered, global supplier of food and beverage ingredients to industrial markets. It was originally a sugar refining business, but from the 1970s it began to diversify, eventually divesting its sugar business in 2010. It specializes in turning raw materials such as corn and tapioca into ingredients that add taste, texture, and nutrients to food and beverages. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
SuperValu, Inc. is an American wholesaler and retailer of grocery products. The company, headquartered in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has been in business since 1926. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of UNFI.
Sysco Corporation is an American multinational corporation involved in marketing and distributing food products, smallwares, kitchen equipment and tabletop items to restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, hospitality businesses like hotels and inns, and wholesale to other companies that provide foodservice. The company is headquartered in the Energy Corridor district of Houston, Texas.
Tate & Lyle Ingredients Americas LLC is an American subsidiary of Tate & Lyle PLC and produces a range of starch products for the food, paper and other industries; high fructose corn syrup; crystalline fructose; and other agro-industrial products. The company was incorporated in 1906 as A. E. Staley Manufacturing Company by Augustus Eugene Staley.
J&J Snack Foods Corporation (JJSF) is an American manufacturer, marketer, and distributor of branded niche snack foods and frozen beverages for the food service and retail supermarket industries. Headquartered in Pennsauken, NJ JJSF uses over 175 facilities for manufacturing, warehousing, and distributing located in 44 states, Mexico and Canada. The company is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market as “JJSF”, and serves both nation and international markets.
McLane is an American wholesale supply chain services company which distributes grocery and non-food to convenience stores, discount retailers, wholesale clubs, drug stores, military bases, quick service restaurants, and casual dining restaurants throughout the United States. It is also a wholesale distributor of distilled spirits, wine, and beer in some US states. McLane is organised in three segments: grocery distribution, serving about 49,000 retail locations, foodservice distribution, catering to about 36,500 chain restaurants, and beverage distribution, servicing about 24,900 retail locations in the Southeastern US and Colorado.
Smart & Final is a chain of warehouse-style food and supply stores based in Commerce, California, which developed through a series of mergers and expansions. The oldest of the combined companies, Hellman-Haas Grocery, was founded in 1871 in Los Angeles. The company operates over 250 stores in the Western United States and 15 in northwestern Mexico.
John Sexton & Company, also known as Sexton Quality Foods, was a broad line national wholesale grocer that serviced the restaurant, hotel and institutional trade from regional warehouses and truck fleets located in major metropolitan areas of the United States. Sexton Quality Foods eventually became US Foodservice in 1997. The company was established in Chicago in 1883 by John Sexton.
S.E. Rykoff & Co., also known as SERCO, was a broad line national wholesale grocer that serviced the restaurant, hotel and institutional trade from regional warehouses, sale forces and truck fleets located primarily on the west coast of the United States. S.E. Rykoff & Co. eventually became US Foodservice in 1997 by merging with JP Foodservice. The company traces its roots to a small family grocery store opened by Harry and Ida Rykoff in Los Angeles, California in 1911.
Bimbo Bakeries USA is the American corporate arm of the Mexican multinational bakery product manufacturing company Grupo Bimbo. It is the largest bakery company in the United States. The company, headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, owns many fresh bread and sweet baked goods brands in the United States, including Entenmann's, Sara Lee, and Thomas'. It is also a top advertising sponsor for many major soccer teams around the globe.
Richelieu Foods is a private label food manufacturing company founded in 1862, headquartered in Braintree, Massachusetts, previously owned by investment group Brynwood Partners and owned from 2010 by investment group Centerview Partners LLC and sold December 2017 to Freiberger USA Inc., Parsippany, New Jersey, USA, a subsidiary of the German Südzucker AG
US Foods is an American foodservice distributor. With approximately $24 billion in annual revenue, US Foods was the 10th largest private company in America until its IPO. Many of the entities that make up US Foods were founded in the 19th century, including one that sold provisions to travelers heading west during the 1850s gold rush. The company used the name U.S. Foodservice until 1993. US Foods offers more than 350,000 national brand products and its own “exclusive brand” items, ranging from fresh meats and produce to prepackaged and frozen foods. The company employs approximately 25,200 people in more than 60 locations nationwide, and provides food and related products to more than 250,000 customers, including independent and multi-unit restaurants, healthcare and hospitality entities, government and educational institutions. The company is headquartered in Rosemont, Illinois, and is a publicly held company trading under the ticker symbol USFD on the New York Stock Exchange.
Red & White was the first store brand for grocery merchandise, food products, beverages and household supplies. The brand was first launched on cans of coffee in 1908 by Smith Michael (S.M.) Flickinger in Buffalo, New York to compete with A&P and its popular private brand coffee and was named after the color on the store shelves.
TreeHouse Foods Inc. is a multinational food processing company specializing in producing private label packaged foods headquartered in Oak Brook, IL. Created in 2005 and consisting entirely of acquisitions, in 2010 the company had sales of $2 billion and employed over 4,000 people at 20 facilities. Food Processing magazine named TreeHouse Foods their 2010 Processor of the Year, calling them "the biggest company you never heard of." The company is a component of the S&P 400 and in 2015 was the 37th-largest food and beverage company in North America. In 2018, TreeHouse Foods was ranked #446 on the Fortune 500 list. In 2020 it dropped to #552 into the Fortune 1000 list.