Sysco merged nine food distributors into one national company

In the 1960s, food distribution in America was local: dozens of small companies each served their own city's restaurants, hospitals and schools with limited product lines and thin buying power. John Baugh, who had built Houston's Zero Foods on frozen-food delivery, decided the way to win was not to out-fight each rival but to merge them.

Baugh recruited eight other food distributors to exchange their stock for shares in one new company. The nine became Sysco, which began operating as a public company in March 1970 — a single brand with pooled purchasing, one product line and a national delivery network.

The model was 'broadline': one distributor carrying a full line of food and non-food products to every kind of foodservice customer, from restaurants and hotels to schools and hospitals. A restaurant could replace dozens of suppliers with one weekly truck.