John F. Baugh

Baugh started in the grocery trade as a young man in Texas and spent his career in wholesale food distribution before organizing the 1969 merger that created Sysco. He later became known in Texas for philanthropy, including gifts to Baylor University.

John F. Baugh (1916-2007) founded Houston frozen-food distributor Zero Foods in 1946. In 1969 he brought Zero Foods together with other independent regional distributors to form Systems and Services Company, or Sysco, which listed its shares in 1970. The idea was simple: restaurants buying from many small local suppliers would value one distributor with national scale and consistent service. John F. Baugh was born in 1916.