Cohen is the owner of C&S Wholesale Grocers, the largest wholesale grocer in the U.S. The Keene, New Hampshire-based company had revenue of $21.7 billion in 2023 and serviced about 7,500 grocery stores across the country. Cohen also owns a stake in Symbotic, a publicly traded robotics company that automates warehouses.
The majority of Cohen's fortune is derived from stakes in Symbotic, a publicly traded provider of robotic technology to consumer goods companies.
Cohen and his family members own 70% of Symbotic indirectly through several different entities, according to an analysis of the company's February 2024 13D filings.
He's also the owner of C&S Wholesale Grocers, the Keene, New Hampshire-based food distributer. C&S, the largest wholesale grocery supply company in the US, services about 7,500 stores, according to its website.
C&S had revenue of $21.7 billion in 2023, according to Moody's. Debt is calculated at $1.9 billion, according to Bloomberg data.
C&S is valued based on the enterprise value-to-Sales margin of four publicly traded peers: United Natural Foods, SpartanNash, Sysco and Performance Food Group.
Cash holdings are based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Lauren La Bruno, a spokesperson for C&S, didn't respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.
Richard B. "Rick" Cohen's grandfather, Israel Cohen, co-founded C&S in 1918 in Worcester, Massachusetts, to supply grocers in the central Massachusetts city.
The Blackstone River breached its banks and destroyed C&S's warehouse in 1929. Rather than shutter the business, Cohen opened a new warehouse twice the size on higher ground.
Israel's son, Lester Cohen, expanded the business into supplying military bases after seeing a potential market while serving as a B-24 navigator in the Pacific theater of World War II. Rick, one of Lester's two sons, received an accounting degree from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and joined the firm full time in 1974, when sales were $14 million.
After a union strike threatened to put C&S out of business in 1975, Rick persuaded his father to move the headquarters to Brattleboro, Vermont, where the company could find bigger space for larger warehouses along with a nonunion labor pool, according to a Harvard Business School case study.
Cohen became president and chief executive officer when his father retired in 1989. He bought out his brother that year for an undisclosed sum, according to a profile of the company by Hoover's. C&S won the contract to serve A&P stores in 1988, boosting revenue by 35%. Adding such a large customer stressed warehouse operations, leading Cohen to embrace self-managed teams and an incentive pay structure that led the company to become the most efficient wholesaler in the business, according to former C&S president Edward Albertian.
Cohen moved C&S headquarters in 2003 to Keene, New Hampshire, 18 miles east of Brattleboro. C&S's sales grew by more than $1 billion a year from 1991 through 2015.
Symbotic, a provider of robotic warehouse automation, became publicly traded in 2022.