Gregory Calhoun

Greg Calhoun, the Alabama-bred businessman who made history as the first African American to own a major grocery store in the South, has passed away. He died on Oct. 11 2018, in Los Angeles, at the age of 66, according to a Facebook post from his daughter ShaKenya Calhoun. In 1984, at age 32, Calhoun paid $735,000 for the Super Food and Big Bear Supermarket and became the first African-American to own a major grocery store in the South. Incidentally, the store he bought was the one he worked in as a teenager. Calhoun Enterprises, of which Calhoun was the founder, president, and CEO, was the umbrella for his seven family-owned subsidiaries. In addition to the Calhoun Foods retail supermarket chain, it included companies across industries as varied as telecom, advertising and marketing, investing and consulting. In recent years, he has partnered with Steve Harvey on a number of business ventures. The two founded an investment group named HarCal that launched a line of food products and bought a factory that manufactures latex gloves.