Alex Lee is an American holding company specializing in food retail and wholesale distribution. It is headquartered in Hickory, North Carolina. It runs its own supermarket chain and supplies food and non-food items to independent supermarkets across about a dozen states across the Southeastern United States.
As of 2014, Alex Lee is ranked 139 on the list of largest privately held companies in the United States, as listed by Forbes.[1] Alex Lee owns the Lowes Foods supermarket chain as well as Merchants Distributors, Inc.,[2] which supplies more than 600 stores located in nine states, mostly in the Southeast.
History
The company's roots date back to around 1920, when A.C. Kelly took over Merchants Produce Company of Hickory, a wholesale fruit and produce company. In 1931, Moses George, a Shelby, North Carolina grocer, bought Merchants Produce for $17,000 and began running it with his sons Alex and G.L. George.[3] Merchants Produce took advantage of the trend away from "mom-and-pop" grocery stores, as chain stores became common.