Affiliated Foods Southwest

Affiliated Foods Southwest was a cooperative wholesale food distributor in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The company specialized in serving the Mid-South independent grocer market. One division of the company still in business is Supermarket Investors Inc., which owns a number of retail outlets including Harvest Foods, Piggly-Wiggly, and Sav-Marts in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. Affiliated Foods entered the retail business in 1997 after buying seventeen liquidated Harvest Foods stores.

The company was founded in 1956. The first CEO and chairman was C. E. "Doc" Toland. In 1997 these positions passed into the hands of Jerry Davis. Into the early 21st century it was one of the largest employers in Pulaski County, with about 2,700 employees and $800 million in annual revenue. The company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy during a credit crunch on May 5, 2009.

References

• David Smith, "Affiliated Foods Files Chapter 11; Jobs Lost," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 6, 2009.
• David Smith, "Affiliated's Collapse Took 600 People's Savings With It," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 31, 2009.
• David Smith, "Questions Linger in Affiliated Foods Postmortem," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 23, 2009.