Talk Story with Chad Buck, Salesperson of the Year 2023

Inside his extraordinary rise from headstrong teen with a one-way ticket to Maui to founder, owner and CEO of Hawai‘i Foodservice Alliance.

Sales and Marketing Executives Association of Honolulu has chosen Chad Buck, founder, owner and CEO of the Hawai‘i Foodservice Alliance, as its 2023 Salesperson of the Year. He will be honored at SME’s annual gala June 13 at the Sheraton Waikiki.

“We select honorees based on contributions to the quality of life as well as enhancing the image of the state,” says SME President Robin Kennedy. “Based on Hawai‘i Foodservice Alliance’s record of philanthropy and in particular to their dedication to serving the victims of the Maui wildfires, we are proud to honor HFA Founder and CEO Chad Buck as SME’s 2023 Salesperson of the Year.”

Hawaii Business asked Buck why and how an 18-year-old from a broken home in Chicago, with no money or contacts, bought a one-way ticket to Maui and ended up founding a company that now ranks 49th on the Top 250 list of Hawai‘i’s biggest organizations.

On His Sales Philosophy

I never had any formal training. This is what I think: Everything in life is a relationship. So when I first started HFA, my client base was exclusively family-owned restaurants. I would go to my clients’ weddings and their other get-togethers. No one else did that.

You know when you walk into family restaurants there are paper signs handwritten with marker? I’d go to Kinko’s and then show up at the restaurants with nice laminated signs. My signs are still in some of those restaurants – faded but still there.

If there’s anything I’m selling now it’s that the only way forward for Hawai‘i is together. It’s going to take all of us, it’s not just the responsibility of government. I would not exist without the community, so I don’t have the right to pull from one without giving as well. We need to build longer tables and not higher walls.

On Moving to Maui at Age 18

Buying a one-way ticket from Chicago and moving thousands of miles away from everything I ever knew was my way of leaving a broken childhood behind.

The Maui brochure just happened to be the only brochure on the counter of the travel agency that day and from where I was, that seemed to be the right path forward.

I rented rooms that kept a roof over my head. Within months I was in a relationship and a teenage stepfather and working three jobs. I had a full-time day job, an evening job and one on the weekends. I built scaffolding for a painter and delivered 5-gallon water bottles in Lahaina.

I became the youngest manager for a store chain when I was still a teenager. I would literally skip a meal to buy a business book. They had business magazines and I could read them and return them to the rack.

What He Learned Early On

I always had an entrepreneurial bent. I never had a job where I didn’t think, “If this was my company what would I do differently?” I always kept one of those little blue or red memo pads and I would write down ideas or quotes. I was fascinated by Theodore Levitt’s book “The Marketing Imagination.” This kid who never paid attention in school was reading a business book!

The most important thing I got from that book was that I had to be willing to work harder and smarter than the person next to me. My co-workers would complain that a guy was a slacker; I’d secretly celebrate because I saw that guy as competition for the next promotion.

When He Felt He Had Made It

In 2002, the Hawai‘i Foodservice Alliance made the list of Pacific Business News’ Fastest 50 Growing Companies in Hawai‘i. When PBN called for an in-person interview, I told them I was between Neighbor Islands. I didn’t want them to see my office and warehouse because it was complete chaos. If you look at the first shot in the article, I’m sitting outside the airport like some jet-setter.

Walter Dods gave out awards at the event. He was like a god to me at the time. When I got up to accept, I told the audience the only reason I did all this was so I could meet him. While I’m leaving the event, I realized it was the first time in my life that I had received a certificate of any kind.

HFA Started Providing Food, Water and Other Critical Supplies Directly to Maui Wildfire Victims, While the Fires Were Still Burning. And the Company Did It at Its Own Expense. How Did That Experience Affect You?

If you had asked me in the first week, I’d tell you there’s something about the ash in the air and having it on you.

When you’re face to face with that level of devastation, in lives and livelihoods lost, and everything they knew in this life was ashes and smoke, then you wonder what really matters now? What matters to that family who is together but has lost everything?

Mayor Richard Bissen invited me for lunch recently. When I get there there’s maybe 20 people in the room, and he’s organized the event just for me. He starts reading a certificate and then he starts reading the letter I wrote him saying that there’s no invoice coming for any of the months of deliveries and he just loses it. He’s got tears running down his face.

Finally I have to get up and say something. I started reading from our first texts as a group of responders when the tragedy was unfolding. We didn’t know each other 24 hours before and yet all our texts are already ending in “I love you.” Going through this life changing experience together we instantly formed lifetime bonds.

Giving Back

My life has been a string of miracles, and I don’t think it was designed for anything other than to give back.

I hired a guy today to work with the high schools. There’s a charter school in Kāne‘ohe with 63 special-needs students who get only 60% of the funding that DOE gets to feed their students. I get a call from the state and so I show up. We had their freshman class here in our building two hours later picking up food. We’re now getting ready to teach them a course in our commercial kitchen on preparing their meals. We just installed a large refrigerator system in the school to store the meals. And they’ve got 13 seniors who are looking for vocations because they’re not going to college. We can teach them to drive tractor-trailers, we can teach them different things.

I know what it’s like to be 18 without what seems like a prayer. So there’s a connection there.