After the $29bn Restaurant Depot sale, the Kirsh family hires for an institutional family office

On 30 September 2026, Billionaires.Africa relayed a Wall Street Journal report that the family of Nathan “Natie” Kirsh is building out its family office in New York ahead of the sale of Jetro Restaurant Depot to Sysco. According to the Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter, representatives of the family have been interviewing candidates for chief investment officer, for seats on an investment committee and for adviser roles. The family has also started looking for a head of private investments and a head of public investments.

The hiring details come from a single originating report. Neither the family nor its office has commented publicly, and the Almanac has not been able to confirm them independently.

The sale behind it

The trigger is well documented. On 30 March 2026, Sysco announced that it would buy Jetro Restaurant Depot, a family-owned cash-and-carry supplier to independent restaurants, in a deal valued at about $29 billion including debt. Reuters reported that Restaurant Depot shareholders will receive $21.6 billion in cash and 91.5 million Sysco shares, worth about $7.5 billion at the time, giving them roughly 16% of the combined company. Sysco expects completion by the third quarter of its 2027 fiscal year.

Succession was part of the reason to sell. Sysco’s chief executive, Kevin Hourican, told Reuters that the founder is in his nineties and his children do not run the business, and that the family had concluded Sysco was the right owner to take it to the next generation. The Journal report describes the family as Kirsh, his three children and their families.

Why the shape of the office matters

Most single family offices run with small teams and lean on outside managers. A CIO, an investment committee and separate public and private markets heads is a different design: closer to an endowment than to a household office. It is built to deploy a large cash sum and to manage a concentrated holding in one listed stock, two problems that arrive at the same time once the deal closes.

The timing is also worth noting. The family is hiring between signing and completion, not after the money lands. That gives the new team time to set an investment policy, agree governance and decide how fast to diversify before it has anything to invest.

What it means for family offices

For families approaching a sale of the operating business, the Kirsh case shows the order of work: decide who will run the money, and under what governance, before the proceeds arrive. Being paid partly in the acquirer’s shares means the post-sale portfolio starts out concentrated, so the CIO’s first decisions are likely to concern that single position and the pace of any sell-down, before new allocations. For advisers, the openings sit in that interim window, in search, investment policy design and committee set-up, rather than in asset management alone.

Sources: Billionaires.Africa, 30 September 2026 (relaying The Wall Street Journal); Reuters via ESM Magazine, 31 March 2026; Sysco news release, 30 March 2026.