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Attention, food shoppers! The recent steep surge in U.S. food prices will end soon, predicts Kevin Hourican, chief executive of Sysco, a food-distribution giant. “I expect food inflation to decrease over the next year at both the grocery store and in our business of food away from home’’ as product availability improves, he says.
Hourican should know.
The 49-year-old veteran retailer leads the nation’s biggest distributor of food and related items to restaurants, schools, and other food-service operations. Sysco delivers food to more than 700,000 locations worldwide.
Hourican, who has been CEO since early 2020, has devised a sweeping strategy focused on the expansion of team-based sales, technology investments, and a revamped supply chain. One result: Sysco resumed growing its market share, reversing declines between fiscal 2010 and 2020. The Houston company saw sales soar nearly 34% to $68.6 billion during the fiscal year ended July 2, 2022.
The 6 ft. 8 in. Hourican played on the 1994 national championship volleyball team for Pennsylvania State University. Equipped with an economics undergraduate degree, he pursued a master’s there in supply chain management partly because he enjoyed learning to manage inventory during his summer job in a hotel kitchen supplied by Sysco. Hourican began his full-time career running the overnight shift at a Sears warehouse. He went on to become an executive for Sears, Macy’s, and CVS Health. He was overseeing CVS’s $85 billion retail business when Sysco hired him.
TIME recently spoke with Hourican about supply-chain crisis aftershocks, his transformational strategy that’s dubbed “Recipe for Growth,” Sysco’s possible…
Source : time
