Wakefern Food Corp. announced Wednesday it has named Mark Van Buskirk as its new group vice president of fresh.
In his role, Van Buskirk will oversee Wakefern’s fresh food divisions and help grow fresh food categories for stores.
Van Buskirk, who most recently served as senior vice president of merchandising and marketing for The Save Mart Companies, brings more than 35 years of expertise in marketing, sales, operations and private brand development for supermarket and convenience chains. While at Save Mart, Van Buskirk led the company’s corporate merchandising and procurement teams and oversaw strategic and financial planning, merchandising analytics and shopper insights.
Prior to Save Mart, he worked at Jacksons Food Stores as vice president of marketing and merchandising, where he led teams that used consumer data and insights to create strategic plans that boosted the company’s market share, Wakefern said.
Before Jacksons, Van Buskirk worked at Albertsons as group vice president of merchandising for grocery, frozen, dairy and liquor. He also led the grocer’s corporate merchandising teams, strategic planning, procurement, and shopper analytics and insights.
Earlier in his career, Van Buskirk helped grow annual sales to over $4.7 billion for SuperValu, the announcement noted. He has also worked at Kroger and Fred Meyer, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“High quality fresh offerings have always been at the heart of the customer supermarket experience – and we know Mark’s expertise and leadership will help us continue to grow these categories and take fresh to the next level,” Wakefern Chief Sales Officer Darren Caudill said in the announcement.
Van Buskirk’s hire marks the latest in a string of top executive changes at Wakefern this year. In January, three C-suite executives departed — Chief Customer Officer Steve Henig, Chief Merchant Bryant Harris and Chief Administrative Officer Bill Mayo — and Darren Caudill, formerly with United Natural Foods, Inc. and Kroger, joined as chief sales officer.
Mayo went on to join Save A Lot this spring as the discounter’s chief development officer.
Wakefern’s member companies run supermarkets under the ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Dearborn Market, Gourmet Garage, Fairway Market and Di Bruno Bros. banners.
