HISTORY OF COMPANY

About Charles "Butch" Gibson, the Founder of Gibson Food Products

For a young man who had no intentions of being in the food business, Charles “Butch” Gibson’s career path led him to spending over 38 years in the wholesale food distribution business. He built a successful food distribution business over a 30-year period that was acquired by Choice Food Group in March 2006.

In 1975, Mr. Gibson started his working career for the Associated Press & The Tennessean while going to school to become an attorney. Needing more money to continue his education, he took a job driving a delivery truck for a local company called Red Hat Poultry. The company grew into what is today called ConAgra, now one of the largest food companies in the world.

His first day at work could have been his last day in the food business. “I reported to work at 4 a.m.,” recounted Mr. Gibson. “My supervisor asked me if I knew how to drive a truck. Well, I replied that I knew how to drive a stick shift and didn’t realize that the two are quite different. I proceeded to knock off the gutters at a delivery to a Taco Bell Restaurant. I was surprised that they didn’t fire me.”

Mr. Gibson kept planning to find another job and continue his college education, he said, “but every time I would tell my supervisor that I was planning to leave, they would offer me a better job.” He kept moving up the corporate ladder from supervisor, to assistant manager to manager. At 27-years-old, he became manager of branch operations for four branches when Red Hat changed their company name to ConAgra. The company was losing money at the time, and Mr. Gibson’s job was on the line as well as the future of the company. He was instructed to make a difference in bringing the company back into the black, which he did successfully over a short four-month period.

So, he continued with ConAgra for 12 years and during that time launched a private label, pre-packing poultry program for H. G. Hill’s grocery story in the late 1970s. Offering pre-packed poultry was a bold move for H.G. Hills during a time when consumers were used to having meat sold over the counter; however, the poultry industry was evolving toward this change. It was Mr. Gibson who made it happen for this up-n- coming grocery story chain.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Gibson decided to go into business for himself and found a buy-out opportunity with Maury Poultry & Egg in Columbia, Tenn. He purchased shares of ownership with the company from owner Glenn Stevenson of Stevenson Ham Company. The partner of the business was Jim Fesmire, owner of Nashville Egg, which years later was bought by Choice Food Distributors.

Mr. Gibson and Mr. Fesmire were a team and as they put it, “ahead of their time,” offering deboned chicken breasts (further processing). ConAgra didn’t see merit in allocating production time to further processing of poulty, so they utilized contractors to expedite that process. It was Mr. Gibson who retained that account because of his previous employment relationship with them. “We bought the chicken from ConAgra’s plant, deboned it, then resold it back to ConAgra,” said Mr. Gibson.

In 1983, Mr. Gibson saw a window of opportunity to sell pork products to Whitt’s BBQ’s chain of restaurants. Two days before the 4th of July, their supplier didn’t have two-thirds of their total order. They called Mr. Gibson in desperation, “If you can get us 50 boxes of pork shoulder, 5,000 pounds total, then we’ll be your customer forever.” That transaction sealed a long-lasting relationship to this day which represented, at the time, a significant portion of business for Mr. Gibson. “We grew with them in building their product lines; we became a real part of their business,” he recalls of the early days.

That same year, the business partners decided to go their separate ways and close Maury Poultry & Egg. Mr. Gibson kept the pork distribution routes that he developed, including the Whitt’s BBQ account, and started his new business called Gibson Food Products, Inc. Mr. Jim Fesmire kept the poultry business, which included the O’Charley’s account, and started his business as Nashville Egg.

To get the business started, Mr. Gibson bought himself a delivery truck and began making deliveries personally for the first seven months of operation as far away as North Alabama. Next, he hired his first two employees, a bookkeeper/sales person and a truck driver.

He rented warehouse space at the old Middle Tennessee Foods Distribution Building for all he could afford, $1,100 a month for a five-year lease. Owner S.E. Knight was sympathetic to him being a young man starting a new business, recalls Mr. Gibson. “He turned down another offer of $3,500 a month to take me.”

“I had a lot of people help me through those early days of starting my business like S.E. Knight who gave me a break and Billy Jo McClain, vice president of H.G. Hill, and Horace Hill, along with all the Whitts’ managers and owners who trusted me with their business” said Mr. Gibson. “I am truly grateful for their help and confidence in me. The business would not have grown as it did without those people, along with my assistant, Melinda Bulington who is still working with me after 23 years.”

He refined his business strategy to be a broadline distributor, offering a diversification of product lines. He further defined his market by specializing in catering to the limited menu restaurants because none of the larger distributors were interested in this niche market.

His warehouse grew to carry and actively sell 2,500 items a week, representing over 50,000 products that were aligned with every major food company in the United States. Mr. Gibson’s business prospered from $300,000 when he started to over $7 million before Gibson Food Products was merged with Choice Food Group.

Mr. Gibson admitted that creating a larger regional distributorship, which would be able to better service operators, be visible to suppliers and assure the personal and professional welfare of his employees, had been his dream for several years.

“I always wanted to build my company or be a part of building one that was really needed by the marketplace and offered opportunities to my employees and customers,” he said. “I also felt a responsibility to take care of all of my employees and customers who were loyal to me all those years of building the businesses because I never knew what would happen to the business should I die. With becoming a part of Choice Food Group, I was able to ensure the stability and longevity of the company I started.”