Acosta Sales & Marketing

Acosta, Inc. is a sales and marketing agency currently headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.

Acosta provides omnichannel retail solutions including headquarter sales, retail execution, merchandising, category management, and business intelligence to national, regional, and emerging brands.

Acosta is a subsidiary of Acosta Group, a parent brand launched in 2023 to unify Acosta and its affiliated agencies.

History

Acosta was founded in 1927 by Lou Acosta. Founder Louis "L.T." Acosta opened L.T. Acosta Company, Inc. This family-run, single-market food broker served the greater Jacksonville, Florida area for 50 years before it expanded across the Southeast.

An office in Tampa was opened and the service area expanded to central Florida. Expanding beyond Jacksonville in 1977, Acosta opened offices in Alabama, Georgia and Florida, which set the stage for continued growth. In 1981, Acosta opened a local office in Miami, Florida. In the 1980s, Acosta's operations spread throughout the southern United States. This included local franchises in Georgia through a 1983 acquisition of Raley Brothers, North Carolina and South Carolina in 1989, and later franchises in Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia.

Acosta participated in multiple consolidations with other food retailers, manufacturers and procurement centers. By the mid-1990s, the company was servicing 27 markets and employed over 2,000 people. These merges included:

• PMI-Eisenhart in July 1998
• Kelley-Clarke in June 1999
• the MAI companies in August 1999
• Luke Soules in July 2003
• C. Lloyd Johnson Company, a military sales agency, in 2008

From 2010 to 2017 Acosta focused on diversifying its services and expanding its national footprint via another series of acquisitions:

• FrontLine Marketing in 2010
• Mosaic Sales Solutions, an interactive experiential marketing firm, in 2012
• Anderson Daymon Worldwide (ADW) in 2014
• The Pet Firm in 2015
• ActionLink in July 2017
• UK-based Reach in 2017

In 2017, Walmart selected Acosta as one of five Preferred Services Providers (PSP) to be part of its "Merchandising Services Program," approving them to perform merchandising services in Walmart's stores on behalf of the retailer or its suppliers.

In December 2019, Acosta filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in efforts to eliminate long-term debt. The company's international operations were not included in the filing. The company emerged from bankruptcy in January 2020 after shedding $3 billion of debt.

From 2021 through 2022, Acosta continued to diversity their business services portfolio through additional strategic acquisitions:

• The Core Group, a foodservice sales agency, in 2021, later merging with Acosta's foodservice offering to create CORE Foodservice
• Impact Group, a natural products sales agency, in 2021
• Premium Retail Services, a merchandising and sales agency, in 2021
• OeP, an Amazon agency, in 2022

As a result of these acquisitions, Acosta's enterprise portfolio began marketing its collective of agencies under the parent brand name Acosta Group in 2023. Acosta continues to operate as a distinct brand within Acosta Group, contributing core retail and commerce capabilities.

Acosta remains a pillar agency under the Acosta Group umbrella. Acosta's headquarter sales agency provides omnichannel retail solutions, business intelligence, order-to-cash, merchandising, revenue growth management, and space and category management.

In 2024, Acosta Group announced the acquisition of sales agency CROSSMARK and in-store product sampling and demonstration agency Product Connections.

The European division, Acosta Europe, acquired Dee Set Group, a UK-based retail and field marketing services company in 2024.

The foodservice division, CORE Foodservice, acquired The Culinary Edge in 2025. The Culinary Edge specializes in restaurant concept creation and menu innovation

Services

Acosta provides a wide range of services to consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and retailers:

• Headquarter Sales & Category Management: working with retailer buyer offices to secure shelf space, negotiate product placement, pricing, and promotional plans.
• Retail Execution & Merchandising: ensuring that products are properly displayed, stocked, and aligned with brand and retailer plans; deploying in-store teams.
• Assisted Sales & Training: training floor staff and setting up in-store education and product demonstrations.
• Data, Insights & Business Intelligence: using proprietary research, analytics, syndicated / retailer data to help clients understand trends, optimize supply chain forecasts, and improve decision-making.
• Convenience Store Channel Coverage: Acosta services over 60,000 convenience stores across independent and chain locations, applying dedicated in-store execution and HQ relationships in this fast-pace channel.

The company supports brands across grocery, mass, club, convenience, and specialty channels.

Leadership

In 1956, Common & Company Food Brokers merged with Acosta. Robert "Hy" Albritton, who owned Common, became president and CEO of Acosta when Lou Acosta retired in 1959.

In 1974 Hy Albritton retired and Delmer Dallas became company president.

Former company president Delmer Dallas recruited Gary Chartrand from the Carnation Company in 1983. Chartrand was named president in 1993 and CEO, when Dallas retired in 1996. Two years later Chartrand was elected chairman of the board.

On January 1, 2009, Gary Chartrand appointed Robert E. Hill Jr. as the company's president and CEO.

In 2020, Brian Wynne became President and CEO.

Appointed in September of 2024, Ashley Roehm is the President of Acosta's HQ Sales Agency.