Our History
Le Grand Marketing's presence in the California food industry dates back to 1978 when F&W Marketing was formed by Warren Draper and a partner. Located a few miles south of Dodger Stadium, the company focused on bakery related products such as fruit fillings, fresh delivered breads and rolls, fried fruit pies, and oriental cookies.
In September 1983 Warren Draper separated from existing partners to form Le Grand Marketing with his son Geoff. They moved their offices to Montebello that same year. At this time the company decided to focus on products for supermarket service bakeries and for the food service industry.
Warren's youngest son, Kevin, joined Le Grand in mid 1984, primarily to work on food service accounts. Together with Geoff, the brothers developed strong relationships with various key accounts and established product sales at all of the top restaurant distributors in Southern California. Marc Draper came to the firm in 1985 to focus on in-store and retail bakery sales. In 1988 the company dropped most of its food service effort to direct the attention to its retail sales.
Le Grand recognizes the value of supplying skilled technical support. For over two decades they have maintained a staff of field level merchandisers. They currently have eight full time technicians to assist with training of store employees, grand and re-grand opening support, product roll-outs, store resets, and program conversions.
In March of 1989 the company moved its offices to the Anaheim area. 1996 saw the addition of several key sales and administrative personnel. Le Grand Marketing entered the Northern California region in 1999 with technical support and in 2000 the company added deli products to their product offering.
In 2000 the company’s ownership transitioned from Warren Draper to his three sons. The brothers continue the philosophy of its founder of providing exceptional support to both vendors and customers alike.
In the same year, the company made a major push into Northern California. Several account executives joined the company in 2004 and made significant contributions with both large and small regional grocery chains as well as a number of key distributors. A transition to a new sales team was made in early 2012 with a focus on a number of untapped opportunities.
In recognition of the significant buying power of the ethnic market in the west, in particular with the purchasing clout of the Hispanic population, Le Grand Marketing continues to direct significant resources to mining growth opportunities in this area.
2005 brought Le Grand into the Arizona market. Currently several key customers are based in the area. This has expanded the company’s footprint into the rest of the southwest.
In early 2007 the company moved to its current Anaheim location, providing administrative and customer service support to all regions. Additional warehouse and office space was added as well as an expanded test kitchen.
In January 2008, Le Grand reached out to the natural food market segment. With the awareness that many people in California and the west have towards healthier eating, this effort has created a number of new opportunities and successful product launches for our vendors as well as the addition of several new vendor clients. Historically many trends that main stream retailers have embraced have started within this market segment.
