January 28, 2017 – Scottsdale, Ariz. – Food Marketing Institute (FMI) tonight honored
Joe Colalillo, president of ShopRite of Hunterdon County, Inc. and chairman and CEO of Wakefern Food Corp., with FMI’s Wegman Award for exercising entrepreneurial leadership in the design of retail strategies and imaginative merchandising.
FMI President and CEO Leslie G. Sarasin commented on Colalillo’s honor saying, “Joe is a champion of new ideas – he has consistently embraced new industry initiatives that empower businesses to better serve the consumer. For instance, Joe was a leading proponent of the food safety training program, SafeMark™, ensuring all of his employees were trained and certified.” Sarasin continued, “Joe is a straight talking, honest broker of goods and services and he inspires our industry to maintain its relevance by his keen commitment to doing what is right for the customer.”
Colalillo is generous with both his time and counsel, serving on multiple boards and board-level committees, including the FMI Board of Directors and the Food Safety Committee. He has been recognized in the past for launching consumer-facing technologies, initiating seafood sustainability programs, cultivating associate engagement and implementing health and wellness solutions in ShopRite stores. Colalillo is also a member of one of FMI’s non-competitive share groups that exchanges new ideas to better their businesses, the industry and the communities which they serve.
A fellow share group member, Chief Executive Officer of Dorothy Lane Market, Inc., and the 2013 winner of the FMI Wegman Award, Norman Mayne, said, “I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Joe to receive an award that is named in the honor of an industry icon, Robert Wegman.”
Colalillo has maintained his family-owned business, founded in the late 1940s by his father, Joseph A. Colalillo. The Colalillo family owns and operates five ShopRite stores located in Flemington, Greenwich, and Clinton, NJ; and Yardley and Bethlehem, PA., and together, these stores employ more than 1,800 associates. In addition to his work with FMI, he offers his time to the New Jersey Food Council’s Board of Directors and received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Colalillo holds a Bachelor’s degree from Villanova University. Colalillo and his wife Jeannie have four children.
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