Founded in 1918, C&S started as a small grocery distribution center. Basically - they bought lots of foodstuffs and sold them to grocers. Simple! But the story gets interesting when Rick Cohen, the founder's grandson, stepped in.
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OK let's do another boring, private business profile: C&S Wholesale Grocers
Why it's interesting:
- Over $30b in annual revenue
- 100% family-owned for 100 years
- VERY secretive. In fact, hard to find photos of owner!
- Owner worth $11b plus
Story 
pic.twitter.com/CeY3KFR5Jn
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"We're the biggest company no one has ever heard of," company spokesman said of C&S. And "I'm not sure I've met anyone as smart, analytic and quantitatively driven as Rick. Many CEOs have a need to prove they're the smartest guy in the room. Rick is not like that."
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Here's the secret: - Grocery wholesaling is a small-margin business. ~5% margins - That means Rick had to focus on efficiency - <2% of +$30 billion worth of orders a year have errors. This is unheard of and their secret sauce. Meaning, a store gets exactly what they ordered
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To make that happen, C&S warehouse teams are small and self-managed. This reduces # of supervisors because lineworkers know what to do. To do this, he incentivized his workers well. Workers get bonuses if no errors and pay is docked if there are too many wrong orders.
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Of course, not everyone likes this. Look at the Glassdoor reviews. Lots of warehouse workers complaining of super long hours: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/C-and-S-Wholesale-Grocers-Reviews-E2737.htm … But it's working in terms of business.
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Another thing C&S does well is logistics. This isn't really a food business. It's logistics. Meaning they have lots of moving parts. To help, Rick bought Symbotic, a robot company that makes picking items from the shelf fast and easy. Here's a pic.pic.twitter.com/S6MRDoerAI
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“What we’re doing with autonomous bots is not that dissimilar from what Google is doing with autonomous cars,” Mr. Cohen said. Cohen wants to automate his business. For perspective, Krogers said only 6% of their warehouses are automated.pic.twitter.com/FAhatXrebG
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Like Amazon and AWS, Cohen bought Symbotic to use for C&S, but he's also selling it to other grocers. “Taking waste out is fascinating to me,” Cohen said. “I walk through a warehouse, and everyone sees what’s happening, and I see what’s not happening.”
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Bringing tech to a very no tech industry is working for C&S. Cohen certainly has this down-home, family-owned business. But they're VERY tech-savvy and forward-looking.
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And lastly, Cohen's interesting because he's frugal and somewhat secretive. He lives in Keene, New Hampshire, a small town, in a $1.5m house. He doesn't put his company's name on the trucks as he likes the low profile.
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He also stays out of the limelight. When Googling him for this, he has like 10 photos of him online. Anyway - a pretty interesting, boring company. Check em out.
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Sources: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fully-autonomous-robots-the-warehouse-workers-of-the-near-future-1474383024 … https://www.newsday.com/business/new-england-s-secret-billionaire-1.5833452 … https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/C-and-S-Wholesale-Grocers-Reviews-E2737.htm … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%26S_Wholesale_Grocers …
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I do these occasionally and love big, boring businesses. Follow me if you want to read more of this stuff!
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