By PAUL BENSABAT
I WAS born in Casablanca when Morocco was still a French protectorate. The humid climate was not good for my asthma, so when I was 7 my parents sent me to a home for children in a French mountain village where the air was healthier. My parents visited when they could and I went home during holidays, but the separation was traumatic for all of us. I lived there for three years and it cured my asthma.
Those years gave me a certain toughness about life that I probably would not otherwise have had. When you’re 7 and don’t have Mom and Dad to run to every minute, you learn to manage your own life. I have some difficult memories of this time, but I learned a lot.
My father owned factories that canned sardines. Watching him conduct business every day influenced me. When I was 6, every time we visited my grandmother, who lived near a lollipop factory, the owner would give me a lollipop. One day I asked if I could buy some, and he said no, that he only sold wholesale. Finally, he sold me a bag of 100, at a penny each. I resold them to children at my school and in our apartment building for 5 cents. I had grasped the concept of profit.
At 18, I enrolled in business school in France and majored in marketing. After graduating in 1978, I moved to New York to study for an M.B.A. in finance and international trade at New York University. I walked out of my first finance class, called my parents and asked them to send me a plane ticket home because I had only understood one out of four words. My parents calmed me down and within three months I became comfortable enough with English to succeed in school.
As I left France for the United States, my best friend from Casablanca suggested that I look up his cousin, Alain Bankier, who was living in New York and was enrolled in the same M.B.A. program I was. Alain has been my friend, co-investor and co-C.E.O. in numerous ventures ever since.
After finishing my M.B.A. in 1980, I got an internship that turned into a job with a group of eight French cheese producers who had an American subsidiary in New York. The company was not doing well and everyone was expecting it to fall apart. I changed its strategy of distribution, and it became a success.
In 1984, I joined the Lactalis American Group, a unit of the big European dairy group, as president and C.E.O. We grew quickly during the 18 years I was there. In 2002, I left because I was itching to start a business with Alain. I had that entrepreneurial spirit in my gut for a long time, and I should have acted on it earlier.
We created the Saveur Food Group in 2003 and started buying companies, including Tyson Foods’ hors d’oeuvres division and DFG Foods, which we rebuilt as Cuisine Innovations. That company is now the parent of brands that include Kaptain’s Ketch and Ratner’s, which make premium prepared foods.
Three and a half years ago, we merged withManischewitz, which is a 123-year-old company. We sell specialty kosher foods, but we have other lines, too, such as Guiltless Gourmet and Season, the big importer of sardines from Morocco. (We have granted the license for Manischewitz wines to Constellation Wines U.S.)
We made some big changes when we took over to turn the company around, like reducing the staff by half. It’s probably the toughest thing you do as C.E.O.
I co-founded and serve as co-president of The French Will Never Forget, a grass-roots initiative that promotes a Franco-American friendship. In September, we erected 75-foot-high models of the Twin Towers near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, in memory of the victims of 9/11.
