Owen Schiano’s big job starts with the small operator

A restaurant can put its name above the door, write its own menu and decide exactly how the room should feel. Somewhere behind that independence sits a delivery schedule. Owen Schiano has spent much of his career in the business that makes other businesses possible: distribution. Food, tires, regional sales, national accounts, warehouses. His job titles have changed. The question at the far end of the order has remained wonderfully practical. Can this supplier help me run my business?

In July 2025, Schiano became chief executive officer of Navis Food Partners, a foodservice distribution platform in the Northeast. He arrived after a decade at US Foods and leadership roles at American Tire Distributors. The move brought him back to foodservice, this time at an organization built around keeping established local companies responsible for their customer relationships.

There is an appealing tension in that assignment. A platform exists to bring businesses together. An independent brand has reasons to retain its own way of working. Schiano now leads a company whose operating model gives each side a defined set of responsibilities. The company name may be relatively young; the names beneath it have been around considerably longer.

A name in the fine print

Schiano’s education joined two ways of looking at a business. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology at Wake Forest, followed by an MBA at the University of Georgia. His public LinkedIn profile lists 1995 to 1997 at Georgia’s Terry College of Business. Prices and people are a useful pairing for someone whose later responsibilities would span sales and operations.

His earlier experience included sales and marketing at Michelin. At US Foods, he moved through leadership positions during ten years with the company, including president of the Atlantic Region and executive vice president of national sales. Those titles describe different distances from the customer: a region with its own operating conditions, then accounts and responsibilities extending across a national organization.

The move to American Tire Distributors left an unusually specific paper trail. A July 29, 2016 amendment to Stuart Schuette’s US Foods severance agreement expressly permitted Schuette to recruit or hire Schiano for ATD. The permission was conditional on extending Schuette’s restrictions on solicitation and interference for another twelve months, through March 31, 2018.

Most career changes are compressed into a line on a résumé. This one also occupied a subparagraph. Schuette signed the amendment on August 1. Schiano joined ATD in September 2016. The document records a practical arrangement for a particular hire, giving the transition from food distribution to tire distribution a date, a name and some rather attentive punctuation.

When the order and the warehouse share a boss

At ATD, Schiano served in field leadership before becoming chief operating officer in May 2019. The newly created job joined responsibility for the U.S. field sales team with responsibility for supply chain operations across North America. It also included continuing oversight of corporate, strategic, customer service and specialty sales teams, alongside Tire Pros.

That combination gave the position a clear operating logic. A salesperson can discuss availability; the supply chain has to make availability real. Bringing those functions under one executive put the customer conversation and the machinery behind it in the same span of responsibility. The appointment was part of a wider leadership realignment, with separate responsibilities for merchandising, strategy, technology and people.

For a distributor, an order crosses several boundaries before it becomes useful. Someone selects a product. Someone confirms the terms. Someone locates it and arranges movement. The customer sees the outcome. The COO’s remit placed Schiano across both the promise made in the sales conversation and the operational work needed to fulfill it.

A few minutes, used well

Schiano did not immediately embrace ATD’s microlearning program. He initially regarded the approach as a familiar trend. The program, Spark, delivered short lessons through Axonify. Rebecca Sinclair and Rick Lima helped develop the learning effort; Schiano became a supporter after seeing the sales team’s engagement. The episode gives his operating career a small, revealing change of mind.

“Training has to be an important part of that business strategy.”

Owen Schiano, 2019

A short lesson has to earn its place in a working day. Its length alone cannot make it useful. The attraction of the approach lay in bringing learning within reach of the people expected to use it, rather than treating knowledge as something acquired once and carried indefinitely. A sales organization has to keep learning as the products and customer questions change.

By July 2020, Schiano was discussing a broader set of dealer tools. ATDMobile allowed customers to check inventory and pricing on a phone or tablet. TireSeller offered an online transaction capability. Spark was also being developed for dealers to train their own teams. These were different uses of technology, tied to specific tasks in the customer’s business.

The practical detail matters. A mobile inventory check answers a question while the customer is still considering the purchase. An online transaction gives a dealer another way to sell. A training tool brings product knowledge closer to the conversation where it is needed. Schiano’s work in this period involved support extending beyond the movement of tires.

The independent dealer at the other end

In ATD’s account of its relationship with Lamb’s Tire, Schiano connected adoption of new tools with trust. Jim Ramsey, the dealer behind Lamb’s, had been an early participant in using ATD’s resources. Schiano described that willingness to work with the distributor as part of making the tools useful. The relationship provided a concrete example of the customer partnership he was discussing.

In 2021, another program illustrated the inventory side of that partnership. ATD Total Access let independent dealers order passenger, light truck and trailer tires from the distributor’s national inventory beyond their local network, using flat-rate shipping. Schiano also described ATD Activate, a loyalty program without a minimum purchase requirement that offered services including a nationwide guarantee program and financing solutions.

There was a cost side as well. In July 2021, ATD increased Total Access shipping fees for some customers. Tire Pros dealers could continue using it without a fee. A distribution service can widen access and still involve decisions about who pays for movement. The convenience of a larger network has to be organized, priced and delivered.

Independence has an organization chart

Navis was formed in 2023. Its first acquisition, in August of that year, was City Line Distributors. Prime Source Foods joined in March 2024. These transactions preceded Schiano’s arrival as CEO, so the platform he inherited already had its initial member businesses. He came to lead the next phase, rather than to claim their beginnings.

The histories are part of the assignment. City Line was founded in 1930 and has a three-generation business heritage. Prime Source brings more than sixty years of history and supplies proteins and provisions, including local products. Navis lists more than 3,000 customers for Prime Source. An acquisition gives these companies a new relationship; it does not give them a new birthday.

When Prime Source joined, the combined platform described coverage from northern Maine to upstate New York and operations from four facilities. The partnership expanded its protein offering and geographic footprint. Those are tangible reasons for bringing distributors together: more territory, complementary products and a wider operating base.

Navis’s stated model keeps selling, marketing, local procurement and distribution center operations with local company leadership. Shared services support finance, accounting, treasury and IT. Schiano therefore leads an organization with a deliberate division between work close to the customer and work supported across the platform.

A new role among continuing relationships

Schiano’s appointment took effect on July 14, 2025. Robert Berkowitz, who had served as Navis CEO for two years after more than four decades at City Line, became chairman emeritus. He continued on the board and remained a major equity holder, with an ongoing focus on platform strategy and acquisition opportunities.

Sean Griffin serves as executive chairman, bringing experience at SuperValu, UNFI and Performance Food Group. Paul Green, who had served as Navis president during integration and growth, returned to the board. The transition placed Schiano alongside leaders who retained a relationship with the business and its direction.

At his appointment, Schiano said he looked forward to helping shape the next phase of growth. It is a forward-looking assignment with a substantial past attached. City Line and Prime Source bring established names. Navis brings the shared structure. His earlier jobs bring experience with sales organizations, operating networks and the independent businesses buying through them.

The result of that work will be felt far from the CEO’s title. A restaurant places an order. A local distributor serves it. Behind the transaction, a platform supplies its own support. Schiano’s new job sits among those connected responsibilities, in the unglamorous and indispensable stretch of business between choosing what to serve and having it arrive.