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Food Distributor's Right Moves, Product Brought Co. to Big Merger
The Leavy family knows their meats.
Earlier this year, National Citybased Harvest Food Distributors , run by brothers Jay Leavy and Kevin Leavy , was trucking more than 14 million pounds of meat to independent grocers and ethnic markets each week.
That's a long way from rural County Meath in Ireland, where the brothers' grandfather, Laurence Leavy, sold beef from a horse drawn cart. Laurence's son, Frank Leavy , emigrated to the United States in the mid-20th century and, with his wife, Eileen O'Connor Leavy, opened a popular pair of meat markets and raised seven children in a small Iowa town.
But it was after they moved to Phoenix that the idea for Harvest Meat Co., as it was then called, was borne, a result of Frank's disappointment with the quality of the meat in the area. He and three of his sons, Jay, Kevin and Dennis Leavy , in their 20s at the time, launched the company in Phoenix and San Diego, which soon became Harvest's headquarters.
Now, Harvest Food has teamed up with another family-owned operation, Detroit-based Sherwood Distributors . The merger announced earlier this year is expected to push the new company's combined sales to nearly $4 billion in 2017 and create the nation's largest independent protein and perishable food distributor.
First Acquisition in 1998
At first, Harvest Meat Co., established in 1989, grew organically, adding branches in Orlando, Kansas City and Denver in its first five years. The company initially distributed only beef and focused on food service distribution. But soon it shifted its efforts to retail, working with suppliers to get meat to independent grocery stores.
The company made its first acquisition in 1998, buying Portland-based Western Boxed Meat . Then, in 2002, it acquired Joseph Solomon Sales , a Los Angeles-based company with a 50-year history.
Next, they added...