Longevity was a common theme at last Thursday’s Family-Owned Business Awards at the Irvine Marriott.
The 25th edition of the lunchtime gathering makes it the second oldest of the six signature award events held by the Business Journal; our Women in Business Awards began in 1995 and marks its latest edition in October.
Given the silver jubilee milestone, it was fitting that Ron Salisbury, owner of Newport Beach’s The Cannery and Louie’s by the Bay restaurants, as well as the family of El Cholo restaurants, was the keynote speaker.
The El Cholo chain, which got its start in Los Angeles, just passed the 100-year mark in 2023; it now has a trio of locations in OC.
Salisbury himself is now in his 90s. His secret for longevity: “I hang out with 85-year-olds,” he quipped at the event. “It keeps me young.”
Salisbury was the Business Journal’s Restaurateur of the Year for 2023 and earned a Family-Owned Business Award last year as well. He remains on the expansion path, with a new restaurant in Salt Lake City opening recently.
“There’s a lot of transplanted Californians” in that area, he noted.
A recent local hangout for Ron Salisbury is the new Mercado González in Costa Mesa; at nearly 70,000 square feet, it’s one of the largest Hispanic-inspired food halls in the country.
“I’ve been there three times” since Mercado’s opening late last year, and he plans to go back soon, Salisbury told the event crowd.
As the market was the redevelopment of another former grocery store, and not a ground-up project, the store didn’t get included in this week’s list of top commercial developers for the past year, though it was among the largest new retail stores to open of late.
The González family, which was behind the Costa Mesa project and runs Anaheim’s Northgate González Markets grocery chain, was a winner at last week’s Family-Owned Business Awards. They’ve been around since the 1980s.
The chain got its name after the family bought a liquor store called Northgate in Anaheim, for its first location.
“We couldn’t afford” to change the name at the time, Edgar González told the event crowd.
The firm now counts over 7,500 employees and brings in more than $1 billion annually.
Another food-focused nominee at the Family-Owned Business Awards, the Sheldrake family behind Placentia’s Polly’s Pies chain of restaurants, has been in business for well over 50 years. Like Ron Salisbury, their founders are also in their 90s.
Given the lengthy track records of those firms, it makes sense that another developer of food halls and other retail-focused projects, Shaheen Sadeghi’s LAB Holding LLC, earned the Up & Coming Award at the event.
The developer of the Anaheim Packing House and Costa Mesa’s LAB and Camp anti-malls has “only” been around since the early 1990s.
The company founder only recently brought his sons into the business to carry it forward, hence the accolade.
For a round-up of this week’s event, see page 4. Features on the five winners will run in the June 10 print edition.
