US Foods history

John Sexton & Co. began as a tea and coffee merchant in Chicago in 1883.

Sowing the Seeds of an Industry: 1940-70

The first distinction between the two groups came about in 1951, with the formation of the Association of Institutional Distributors.

Acquisitions included Valley Industries of Las Vegas, Arrow Paper and Supply Company, based in Connecticut, Squeri Food Service of Cincinnati, and Mazo-Lerch Company, Inc., the 70-year-old food distributor based in northern Virginia that had held the first food fair in 1953.

In 1958, Mazo-Lerch held the first food show, and was one of the first distributors to offer both custom-cut meats and beverage dispenser programs.

In 1965, Americans spent just 20 cents of every food dollar for food away from home.

Consolidated Foods bought the old Pearce-Young-Angel distribution network in 1971 and merged it with its Monarch Foods subsidiary to form PYA/Monarch, which would eventually become the foundation of US Foodservice.

S.E. Rykoff went public in 1972, one of the few foodservice distributors to do so.

By 1982, the foodservice distribution was a $69 billion industry.

S.E. Rykoff bought Sexton & Co. in 1983, in what was then the largest acquisition in the industry.

By 1986, Americans were spending one-third of every food dollar outside the supermarket, and the foodservice distribution had grown to a $78 billion industry.

In June 1989, members of PYA/Monarch management incorporated a new entity, JPF Holdings, Inc.

JP Foodservice Distributors passed the $1 billion mark in its first year, with sales for fiscal 1990 of $1.02 billion.

JP's business, which for fiscal 1995 reached $1.12 billion, was about 55 percent independent (hospital cafeterias, family-owned restaurants) and 45 percent chains.

Then, in December 1997, the company jumped into second place among foodservice distributors with the purchase of rival Rykoff-Sexton Inc. for $1.4 billion.

US Foods had agreed to be acquired by Sysco SYY, +0.64% in December 2013, but the deal fell through when regulatory approvals failed to come through.

US Foods says it’s the second-largest United States food-service distributor, with a 2014 market share of 9%, and provides food for more than 250,000 customer locations.

For the 39 weeks ending 2015, US Foods said it made $17.1 billion, slightly lower than the $17.3 billion in the year-earlier period.

Following that setback, US Foods launched an initial public offering in May 2016 before becoming a fully publicly owned company in December of last year, following the exit of its largest private equity shareholders.