Stew Leonard Sr., founder of the iconic East Coast grocery chain that carries his name, died Wednesday at a New York City hospital following a brief illness, the company said. He was 93.
Leonard, who had worked for his family’s milk-delivery company and concluded it was unlikely to survive, established Stew Leonard’s with a 17,000-square-foot dairy-themed store in Norwalk, Connecticut, that opened in December 1969 and carried only eight items, according to the grocer.
Stew Leonard Jr., one of Leonard’s sons, became president and CEO of the company in 1987. In 1991, his son Tom opened the second store in the family-owned chain in Danbury, Connecticut.
Today, Stew Leonard’s runs seven supermarkets in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, as well as several liquor stores, and has annual sales of about $600 million.
Each Stew Leonard’s store stocks only about 2,200 items — a fraction of the number of products supermarkets typically carry — according to the retailer’s website.
In August 1986, former President Ronald Reagan presented Leonard with the Presidential Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence, and he spoke at the White House about his “four secrets of success.” But in 1993, Leonard was sentenced to more than four years in prison and fined over $900,000 after pleading guilty along with three others to tax fraud.
“We had great people working for us that had been there a long time — a solid core of good people. And a lot of the customers knew my father and were friends with him. He had done a lot in the community. Everyone just sort of supported my dad and the family through that time,” Stew Leonard Jr. told CBS MoneyWatch in 2014.
Leonard, whom the company noted was known for greeting shoppers at the front of his stores, often by name, leaves behind his wife of 70 years, Marianne Guthman Leonard, as well as four children, 13 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
