ShopRite of Hunterdon County, the family-owned company that operates five ShopRite stores in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has announced that Sam Colalillo has joined the business.
He will work with Joe Colalillo, his father and president of ShopRite of Hunterdon County, and the retail teams at the family’s ShopRite stores located in Flemington, Greenwich and Clinton, New Jersey, and Yardley and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
“We are very excited to have Sam join us in the family business,” said Joe Colalillo. “Sam is a next generation leader who is passionate about growing the business in new and innovative ways to make our stores the best they can be – for our associates and customers.”
In addition to his role as president of the family company, Joe Colalillo has served for the last 18 years as chairman of Wakefern Food Corp., the retailer-owned distribution and merchandising arm for all ShopRite stores.
Like his father, Sam Colalillo spent time in his family’s ShopRite stores growing up and loved visiting his grandfather and dad at the stores before he could officially work. During school breaks, he worked in produce, bakery and online shopping. His first job was cleaning price tag residue off shelves, foreshadowing his career in retail analytics.
Before returning to his family’s business, Colalillo served as global VP of embedded and retail analytics at NielsenIQ, creating products to help retailers and manufacturers in the food industry use scalable analytics to improve their business. From 2017-21, he led NielsenIQ’s Global Revenue Management and Optimization Software Suite, developing price and promotion software.
Prior to his product management experience, he supported a major manufacturer’s category management organization, using price, promotion, assortment, space and marketing analytics to drive sales and customer engagement.
Reflecting on the transition back to his family’s stores, Sam Colalillo shared that he is “thrilled to return to the business to work and train with my dad. It’s an exciting time for the supermarket industry, and I look forward to getting to know our store teams and customers. ShopRite of Hunterdon County has a long commitment to the communities where our stores operate, and I want to help carry on that tradition with my parents.”
About ShopRite
ShopRite is the registered trademark of Wakefern Food Corp., a retailer-owned cooperative based in Keasbey, New Jersey. With about 280 ShopRite supermarkets located throughout New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland, ShopRite serves millions of customers each week.
Through its ShopRite Partners In Caring program, ShopRite is dedicated to fighting hunger in the communities it serves. Since the program began in 1999, it has donated about $62 million to food banks that support more than 2,200 charities.
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