C&S Wholesale Grocers has named Joe Cavaliere as its chief commercial officer (CCO), a newly created position, effective September 4, 2018.
Cavaliere brings more than 30 years of deep industry experience to the Keene, NH-based wholesaler, having led national sales organizations at Kraft Foods, Unilever, and Newell Brands, where he was most recently president and global chief customer officer.
“Joe is a results-driven, strategic leader focused on people leadership, customer development, and identifying creative solutions for solving customer issues,” said Mike Duffy, C&S’s chief executive officer. “He has a passion for building high performing teams and developing new capabilities and will be instrumental in defining solutions to help our customers win.”
C&S said that the addition of a chief commercial officer at this time signals an enhanced focus on customer collaboration to innovate for the evolving grocery retail landscape. Selecting an executive with Cavaliere’s wide breadth of industry experience will position C&S well to continue following consumer trends to provide the highest level of business partnership to current and new customers, the company, which is the largest grocery wholesaler in the U.S. added.
“C&S has an impressive legacy of innovation and delivers distribution excellence for the lowest cost in the food business,” said Cavaliere. “In the years ahead, we have a unique opportunity to build on this success to leverage industry-leading capabilities to become the undisputed partner of choice for growth.”
Cavaliere currently serves on the board of directors for Sprout Foods, a manufacturer of organic baby products based in Montvale, NJ. Throughout his career, he has served on the boards of Habitat for Humanity, Breakthrough Atlanta, The National Association of Chain Drug Foundation, RILA (Retail Industry Leaders Association), and Enactus.
He earned a BA in economics and business administration from Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA.