Dive Brief:
- Tony’s Fresh Market CEO Frank Ingraffia is stepping into the newly created chief transformation officer position at parent company Heritage Grocers Group, according to a Tuesday announcement.
- The previous week, the Hispanic grocery company announced two executive promotions, including a new group vice president of merchandising and a group vice president of marketing.
- These leadership changes come less than six months after Suzy Monford, a veteran grocery executive, took over as chairman and CEO of Heritage.
Dive Insight:
Since Monford’s appointment to helm the company in November, Heritage has announced a slew of executive appointments, primarily stemming from internal promotions.
As chief transformation officer, Ingraffia will lead the company’s newly created Transformation Office. Heritage said it created the department in December to focus on e-commerce, retail media, price and promotion optimization, and inventory and supply chain improvement, per the press release. Ingraffia will take on this role in addition to his current responsibilities as CEO of Tony’s Fresh Market.
Ingraffia, who is the son of Tony’s Fresh Market’s founder Tony Ingraffia, has been with the Heritage banner since 2003, starting as a bagger and eventually working in every store-level department, according to the announcement. At the corporate level, he held a variety of positions for the chain, including real estate director and vice president of corporate operations, before taking over his father’s role as CEO.
The previous week, Heritage also announced it promoted Kim Cates to serve as group vice president of merchandising and named Allison Garcia as group vice president of marketing.
Cates brings more than 20 years of experience from Texas-based grocer H-E-B, where she held a number of store operations titles. Before joining Heritage, she worked for Associated Wholesale Grocers as its director of center store sales.
Garcia has spent her 16-year food industry career with Kroger in roles such as marketing leader at Ralphs, director of marketing for Kroger Enterprise and marketing leader at Fry’s Food and Drug.
While both women stepped into these roles for Heritage in mid-April, they both originally joined the company in February, with Cates as vice president of center store and Garcia as vice president of marketing.
In February, Heritage promoted Matthew Holt from chief accounting officer to CFO. He now oversees financial and accounting functions for the grocery company’s banners, including Cardenas Markets, Tony’s Fresh Market, El Rancho Supermercado and Los Altos Ranch Market.
