Richard B. "Rick" Cohen (born 1952) is an American billionaire and the owner of

C&S Wholesale Grocers C&S Wholesale Grocers is a national wholesale grocery supply company in the United States, based in Keene, New Hampshire. In 2021 it was the eighth-largest privately held company in the United States, as listed by Forbes. C&S owns the Piggly W ...

(C&S), a wholesale grocery supply company in the United States. He is also the chairman and chief product officer of Symbotic, an artificial intelligence-enabled robotics company.

Early life and education

Richard Cohen was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1952 to Norma and Lester Cohen. In 1970, he graduated from the

Deerfield Academy Deerfield Academy is an elite coeducational preparatory school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1797, it is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States. It is a member of the Eight Schools Association, the Ten Schools Admis ...

in Deerfield, Massachusetts and then in 1974, he graduated from the

Wharton School The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in P ...

of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

with a degree economics, concentrating in accounting.

Career

In 1974, Cohen began working at the family company, C&S Wholesalers in Worcester, Massachusetts, which was co-founded by his grandfather, Israel Cohen, in 1918. After a three-week union strike that nearly shuttered the business, he persuaded his father to move the company to

Brattleboro, Vermont Brattleboro (), originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The most populous municipality abutting Vermont's eastern border with New Hampshire, which is the Connecticut River, Brattleboro is located about ...

.
by Brendan Coffey & Zohair Siraj, August 5, 2013; accessed May 3, 2014. In 1989, Cohen took control of C&S after his father retired and in 2003, he moved the company headquarters to

Keene, New Hampshire Keene is a city in, and the seat of Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 23,047 at the 2020 census, down from 23,409 at the 2010 census. Keene is home to Keene State College and Antioch University New England. I ...

. As the food distribution business is very low margin and customer retention is critical, C&S has been able to attain efficiencies - less than 2 percent of the orders processed have errors or omissions - by using performance incentives combined with self-managed teams of workers who are responsible for assembling customer orders thereby eliminating costly supervisors. Cohen is also the founder of Symbotic,a robotics warehouse automation company. As of 2021 Symbotic’s artificial intelligence-enabled platform was used by C&S,

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, f ...

Albertsons Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho. With 2,253 stores as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 and 270,000 employees as of fiscal year 2019, the company is the second-larg ...

, and other large retailers. In December 2021, Symbotic announced plans to go public through a merger with a SPAC sponsored by SoftBank in order to accelerate its push into warehouse automation.

Philanthropy

In 2001, The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at

Keene State College Keene State College is a public liberal arts college in Keene, New Hampshire. It is part of the University System of New Hampshire and the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges. Founded in 1909 as a teacher's college (originally, Keene Norm ...

was renamed after the Cohens in thanks of their financial support.

Personal life

Cohen is married to Jan Cohen, executive producer of the Kaddish Project, a musical oratorio on genocide; the couple have three children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Richard B. 1952 births Businesspeople from Massachusetts American philanthropists American billionaires Living people Businesspeople from New Hampshire Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Deerfield Academy alumni 21st-century American Jews