Scott McPherson and the distance between a shelf and a sale

At Performance Food Group’s investor day in May 2025, Scott McPherson returned from a break with a small observation about his audience. “I saw somebody with two cookies.” Lunch was still ahead. He joked about keeping everyone awake, then moved into the subject he wanted to discuss first: sales. For a food distributor, even the refreshments can become part of the presentation.

The moment offers a useful introduction to a career usually described through titles, operating divisions and acquisition announcements. McPherson can work a room without making himself its principal attraction. After the joke, he got down to the business of helping customers buy more, helping salespeople sell more and making the machinery behind both work better.

On January 1, 2026, he became president and chief executive officer of Performance Food Group, succeeding George Holm. His route there began in the sales organization of a Portland distribution center in 1992. Between those two points lies an education in the distance separating a product on a warehouse shelf from a purchase at a store. It is a distance measured in relationships as well as miles.

01 / THE LONG ROUTEPortland, then the rest of the map

McPherson studied business administration at Lewis & Clark College in Portland and later earned an MBA at the University of Portland. His LinkedIn profile places the graduate studies between 1995 and 1997, overlapping his early years at Core-Mark. Classroom work and a distribution business were running alongside each other. The degrees gave him a formal business education; the job supplied a very particular setting in which to use it.

His early responsibilities were rooted in sales. Core-Mark’s filings describe him as a general or area sales manager at the Portland distribution center from September 1992 to June 2000. Later assignments included corporate marketing, leadership of the Fort Worth division and responsibility for U.S. divisions. These were different views of the same commercial problem: what a retailer needs, what the distributor can provide and how to make the exchange worthwhile.

By 2014, Core-Mark was moving him from corporate development into a broader role covering business operations and strategic opportunities. He had accumulated responsibility across selling, distribution and acquisitions. The pattern matters because his eventual elevation to chief executive followed years spent inside the operating business, with successive jobs widening the territory he had to understand.

He became Core-Mark’s president and chief operating officer in October 2017. In July 2018, he took over as president and CEO following Thomas Perkins’s retirement. Twenty-six years after joining the company, he was responsible for the whole enterprise. A convenience store customer might see a familiar delivery arriving; behind it, the former Portland sales manager now had a much larger map to keep in order.

02 / THE LONG ROUTEA better answer than another box

One of McPherson’s contributions before becoming CEO was the creation of Core-Mark’s Core Solutions Group. By the time of his 2017 promotion, he had also been leading acquisition activities since 2006. Those responsibilities put two routes to growth within his reach: buying additional capabilities and making the existing business more useful to customers.

Core-Mark’s customer services extended beyond moving merchandise. Category management, merchandising and inventory support addressed the decisions retailers make after a delivery arrives. Which products deserve shelf space? Which assortment fits the customer base? A box successfully unloaded is only one stage in that sequence. The retailer still needs somebody to want what is inside.

In his first annual letter as CEO, McPherson described plans for customer analytics tools and a Convenience Center of Excellence. The ambition was concrete: let retailers examine consumer trends and shopping behavior, and make data available when they needed it. Distribution would carry advice and information alongside products. For an independent operator, a clearer view of the shelves could be as useful as a fuller stockroom.

The Center of Excellence opened in January 2020. The 14,000-square-foot Westlake facility brought together retailers, vendors, industry specialists and Core-Mark strategists. Its purpose was to work through ideas and commercial opportunities with customers. The building gave physical form to a proposition McPherson had been advancing for years: a wholesaler could participate in improving a store’s business, rather than simply wait for its next order.

03 / THE LONG ROUTEThe headquarters follows the customers

Early in his Core-Mark CEO tenure, McPherson also explained a less glamorous strategic decision: moving the corporate headquarters from the San Francisco area to Westlake, Texas. The relocation was scheduled for the first half of 2019. He pointed to operating costs, taxes and a more central position within a business that had expanded far beyond its original home.

He described the advantage as getting nearer to customers and placing headquarters more centrally among the divisions. The company already had a presence in Fort Worth and a data center in Plano. Its headquarters was catching up with the geography of the organization it managed. A map could make the argument without much assistance from a motivational poster.

The decision fits the practical emphasis visible elsewhere in his career. Office location, customer services and distribution capacity all affect the usefulness of a supplier. In Core-Mark’s 2019 annual report, operational improvements included warehouse voice technology and driver scanning systems. The stated benefits involved throughput, accuracy, less paperwork and faster handling of credits. These are modest-sounding improvements until a customer or driver has to live without them.

“Being closer to our customers and more central to our divisions”SCOTT MCPHERSON / ON THE MOVE TO TEXAS, 2018

04 / THE LONG ROUTEThe acquired executive gets a wider remit

On September 1, 2021, PFG completed its acquisition of Core-Mark. McPherson remained Core-Mark’s president and CEO. The expanded convenience operation retained the Core-Mark name and its Westlake headquarters, while Eby-Brown maintained operations in Naperville, Illinois. Tom Wake, Eby-Brown’s president and CEO, reported to McPherson. The transaction brought together businesses as well as delivery networks.

For McPherson, the sale began a new sequence of responsibilities. In August 2022, he became a PFG executive vice president and led its Convenience segment. His remit also expanded to include Vistar. His next promotion, announced in December 2023 and effective January 1, 2024, made him executive vice president and chief field operations officer, overseeing PFG’s principal operating segments.

Chris Hobson succeeded him as Core-Mark’s president and CEO. Hobson had joined that business as a general sales manager in 2000 and advanced through division and marketing leadership. The handover had a familiar shape: another executive whose experience had accumulated within the company moved into the top job. McPherson, meanwhile, had to apply his convenience background across a broader collection of customers and businesses.

PFG named him president and chief operating officer in January 2025. His progression is an instructive detail of the acquisition story. The executive who arrived through the purchased business was being entrusted with more of the buyer. By the time the CEO succession was announced that December, he had already spent years learning the organization he would lead.

05 / THE LONG ROUTEThe names behind the numbers

McPherson has used investor presentations to direct attention toward employees whose work rarely appears in an executive biography. In February 2025, he highlighted José Luis Arias at Vistar, who had started as a sanitation specialist more than 50 years earlier and become a commercial driver. Arias was approaching three million accident-free miles. In a business dependent on deliveries, that is a particularly legible form of accomplishment.

He also singled out Core-Mark human resources leader Ali Marciano and Performance Foodservice’s Jasmin Dhanda for industry recognition. The examples came from different parts of PFG. They made his account of the company more specific: a driver with decades of service, a personnel leader and a recognized foodservice colleague. The audience heard names attached to the organization’s work.

His public LinkedIn activity offers another small window into that approach. He shared a tribute to military veterans after Core-Mark hosted U.S. Army veteran John Wayne Walding. It was an acknowledgment of an employee gathering and the speaker’s service. Alongside the formal career milestones, such moments show what McPherson has chosen to recognize publicly: customers, colleagues and people with experiences worth hearing.

06 / THE LONG ROUTEA new chief, an old discipline

The 2026 succession kept Holm involved as executive chair, working on acquisitions, customer relationships and strategic direction. McPherson assumed the CEO role and joined the board. The arrangement placed operational responsibility with a successor who knew the business while preserving a continuing role for the executive who had helped build it. Both men presented the transition as planned continuity.

By August, PFG had reported fiscal 2026 sales of $67.8 billion, up 7.2 percent, and net income of $359.3 million, up 5.6 percent. Total case volume increased 5.1 percent. The fiscal year included months before McPherson became CEO, so those figures describe the company across a leadership transition. They give the size of his assignment without turning a team’s annual performance into a personal trophy.

In his shareholder letter dated October 9, 2026, McPherson described progress integrating Cheney Brothers and José Santiago. He also discussed additions including Nebraska-based Cash-Wa and specialty meat distributor Natco. His stated direction combined growth from the existing business with selected acquisitions, against an environment of changing demand, food-price movements and competition. There was plenty of work after the succession announcement.

The through-line is visible from Portland to Westlake to PFG: find more customers, make the offer more useful, and make the operating network capable of delivering it. McPherson now leads more than 44,000 associates. His responsibilities have grown considerably since 1992. The underlying question remains refreshingly ordinary: how does this business help the person placing the next order? There are spreadsheets behind the answer. Occasionally, there are cookies.