Briefs 2010-11-01

Bernard Leonard, group vice president for foodservice at Tyson Foods, has been elected chair of the National Chicken Council for the 2010-11 year.

Superior Farms has entered an agreement to purchase Iowa Lamb Corp. Iowa Lamb markets the Grove Meats foodservice brand, which will be integrated into Superior's existing operations.

Gordon Foodservice has promoted President Jim Gordon to CEO, succeeding Dan Gordon, the CEO for the past 20 years, who will now serve as chairman. Tony Groll succeeds Jim Gordon as president while Randy Plekker has been named executive vice president/chief strategy officer.

Standex Foodservice Group has acquired Tri-Star Manufacturing Co., a maker of primary cooking equipment, including a line of commercial ranges, open pot fryers and other traditional cooking accessories that Standex says will fill out its cooking product line.

Marriner Marketing Communications has added Lauren O'Neil and Dawn Riley to its account service team. O'Neil has experience managing multiple consumer and business-to-business campaigns for leading brands like Lands End, Sears and the NAACP, as well as client-end experience with CA Technologies and Sodexo. Riley was an account supervisor for Perdue Foodservice as well as director of corporate marketing for US Foodservice.

Hormel Foods has named Steven Binder executive vice president of Refrigerated Foods and Jody Feragen executive vice president/CFO.

Taylor Fresh Foods has completed the purchase of River Ranch Fresh Foods, LLC, a processor/distributor of salads, salad kits and cut vegetables under private and River Ranch brands, Popeye brand spinach and cut vegetable snacks and commodity vegetable products.

Seneca Foods Corp. is acquiring Unilink, LLC, and affiliated company Lebanon Valley Cold Storage, LP, sellers of frozen fruits and vegetables in the packaged private label retail and foodservice channels.

Sargento Foods has named Michael Helm senior national account manager for its foodservice division. Previous to joining Sargento, Helm served as director of national accounts for Insight Beverages.

US Foodservice has named John Lederer president/CEO. He comes from Walgreens-owned Duane Reade chain, where he was president/CEO.