The 94-Year-Old Restaurant Supply Tycoon Building One of the Biggest Family Offices
Following the sale of Jetro Restaurant Depot to Sysco, the Kirsh family is recruiting senior investors to guide an expanding New York family office
- The Kirsh family is expanding its New York family office after patriarch Nathan Kirsh sold Jetro Restaurant Depot to Sysco for $29 billion.
- Representatives for the family are interviewing candidates for investment chiefs, investment committee members, advisers and heads of investments.
- The family ultimately expects to have most of its fortune managed through the revamped family office, including oversight of outside firms.
The Kirsh family is building out what is expected to be one of the largest family offices created in recent years after its patriarch, Nathan Kirsh, sold his restaurant supply company, Jetro Restaurant Depot, earlier this year for $29 billion, including debt.
Representatives for the family have been interviewing potential investment chiefs, investment committee members and advisers for the existing Kirsh family office in New York, sometimes called Kifo, as they prepare to manage the sudden influx of money, said people familiar with the matter. The family—Kirsh and his three children and their families—also has kicked off a search process for a head of private investments and a head of public investments.
The family currently has a few employees in its small family office and works with outside investment firms, the people familiar said. They ultimately expect to have most of their fortune managed through their revamped family office, including oversight of money managed by outside firms. The company sale to Sysco, which is expected to close by the end of the first quarter, was for $22 billion in cash and 91.5 million in Sysco shares, worth about $7.2 billion at Tuesday’s close.
The Kirshes are part of an explosive wealth boom at the top. Total U.S. household wealth reached a record $185.7 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, according to Federal Reserve data, though new wealth is disproportionately accruing to the already well-off. The share of wealth held by families in the top 0.1% climbed to 15% from 13.5% five years earlier; families in the rest of the top 1%, a much larger group, saw their share of wealth hit 17.5%, from 17.2%.
The number of single-family offices, which manage the fortunes and affairs of a single family, roughly reflects the surge in wealth at the top. Wealth-intelligence firm Altrata estimates there were 9,237 single family offices globally in 2025, up from 6,269 in 2019.
Jeff Bezos’ stepfather, Mike Bezos, hired a chief executive for his Miami-based family office last year as he began institutionalizing it; he and his late wife, Jacklyn Bezos, were estimated to be worth about $45 billion earlier that year. SGF Capital was set up in Dallas in 2024 to manage the fortune of the late oilman Autry Stephens, who died in 2024, months after selling his company for $26 billion. Members of the Mills family, who in 2021 sold their majority stake in medical-supplies distributor Medline Industries to a private-equity consortium for more than $30 billion excluding debt, set up several family offices—Cedar Pine, Council Ring Capital and MBB Capital Partners—to manage their pieces of the fortune.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, whose fortune has climbed to an estimated nearly $200 billion, has a small family office but also has become a client of multifamily office Iconiq Capital in San Francisco, according to people familiar with the matter.
A family office’s function varies depending on the desires of the family that forms it, but the most sophisticated can manage a family’s fortune as well as provide tax-and-estate planning, legal counsel and concierge services like private planes, bill pay, household staffing and the management of a portfolio of homes. Some advise a single-family office is worth setting up only if a family has a net worth of at least $1 billion.
Joining a family office can come with risks for investment staff compared to working at an institutional investment firm. A patriarch or matriarch could change his or her mind about wanting to have and manage a family office, and opportunities for promotion can be slimmer. Navigating family dynamics, which can grow trickier as a family grows more complex, also is a consideration. Family offices today often need to operate across generations and jurisdictions, according to Citigroup’s 2026 Global Family Office Report, based on its survey of 351 family office clients.
Headhunters say good governance can reduce some risks of joining a family office and that a family’s long-term investment horizon can be attractive.
Born in South Africa to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, Nathan “Natie” Kirsh, 94, early on served small businesses during apartheid that sought affordable goods through his wholesale distribution business. Customers, including Black shopkeepers who didn’t have access to credit, visited his warehouses to pick up produce and other items and pay with cash, a model that cut delivery and distribution costs.
He was looking abroad for opportunities by the mid-1970s. During a visit to New York, he studied how bodegas sourced their goods and found it inefficient, he told a London Business School class in 2011, looking back on a career that had spanned continents and companies. He founded Jetro Cash & Carry in Brooklyn in 1976 with a similar model and built what became Jetro Restaurant Depot into a dominant force in the restaurant-supply market. “I have an instinct to see opportunity where others may not,” he said in the talk.
Restaurant Depot operates 167 stores across 35 states and had about $16 billion in revenue in 2025.
Linda Mirel, one of Kirsh’s children and an immediate past president of UJA-Federation of New York, is heavily involved in the process of building out the family office, the people said. She is working with executive search firm BraddockMatthewsBarrett. Members of the family, which also include Kirsh’s other daughter, Wendy Fisher, chair of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, are located in New York, London, Los Angeles and elsewhere.
The search firm has described the investment chief as having a “rare” mandate to create a family office investment platform from the ground up.
The chief investment officer is expected to build an endowment-style portfolio, a team and the family office’s investment processes and infrastructure, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The family’s investment portfolio includes a London skyscraper called Tower 42, Australian real-estate company Abacus Property Group and a stake in outsourced CIO firm Partners Capital. Partners has managed part of their wealth to date, along with consulting-and-OCIO firm Cambridge Associates.