John Sexton & Co. Purchased By S.E. Rykoff & Co.
After many years of buying companies, Beatrice Foods began the process of divesting. In 1983, Beatrice Foods announce that it was divesting 50 business of which, John Sexton & Co. was generating $380 million in sales which represented a 10% annual revenue growth since its purchase in 1967.
The CEO of S.E. Rykoff & Co., Roger Coleman approached Beatrice with an offer to buy John Sexton & Co. Beatrice initially said no. In 1983, S.E. Rykoff & Co. ($346 million in sales) was a broad line grocer and restaurant equipment provider that operated in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. Rykoff had begun in 1911 as a family grocery store located near Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. In 1919, Saul Rykoff dropped his retail customers and focused exclusively on wholesale customers. In 1972 S.E. Rykoff & Co. went public and the shares were traded in the over the counter market (NASDAQ).
S.E. Rykoff & Co. CEO, Roger Coleman persuaded Beatrice Foods to sell John Sexton & Co. for $84 million. With the purchase of Sexton Quality Foods, Rykoff double in size, gained a national distribution network of 18 warehouses, a national sales force, recognized brand name, a loyal customer base, food manufacturing facilities, food laboratories, test kitchens, chemical manufacturing facilities, a coffee roasting plant and a spice blending operation. The Sexton Quality Foods west coast branches in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Hawaii were absorbed into the Rykoff operations. Sexton Quality Foods branches in the south, Midwest, east and south continued to operate under the Sexton banner. In 1984, to reflect the importance of the Sexton Foods acquisition, S.E. Rykoff & Co. changed the company name to Rykoff-Sexton. However, Rykoff-Sexton continued to operate Sexton Quality Foods and Rykoff as two separate companies since merging the two companies was a complex task that involved customers, labor, systems, brands, products and corporate identity.
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