Longtime Liberty Fruit CEO retires

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Liberty Fruit Co. CEO Arnold Caviar celebrated his last day as CEO with friends, family and business partners May 18.

After 47 years in charge of the Kansas City wholesaler, Caviar becomes chairman of the board and will no longer have any day-to-day dealings with the business, said Liberty Fruit president Allen Caviar.

“I’m his son, so I’ll still talk to him all the time, but we’re not talking business,” Allen Caviar joked.

Arnold Caviar said he’s proud of what he built at Liberty, but he’s confident the business will be in good hands with the recently hired CEO John McClelland, who started in mid-May.

“I’ve gotten to know him the past month and a half and seen how he treats his employees, and he’s irreplaceable,” McClelland said. “He’s a legend. He treats people here like family.”

McClelland came to Liberty Fruit from Paragon Foods in Pittsburgh, Pa., where he was most recently chief operating officer for the past eight years.

Arnold Caviar has owned Liberty Fruit with his wife Carol since 1982. He garnered The Packer’s Jan Fleming Legacy Award in 2016 at the Midwest Produce Expo. At the time, The Packer publisher Shannon Shuman noted that when Caviar bought Liberty Fruit, the company had three trucks. Now it has more than 70 and distributes produce to more than 1,600 foodservice clients, 400 retailers and 150 wholesalers.