J. Bruce Llewellyn

Owner of the fourth largest bottler and the third largest black-owned business in America, Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling chairman and CEO James Bruce Llewellyn has distinguished himself as an industry giant.

The son of Jamaican immigrants, Llewellyn was born in 1927 in Harlem, New York.

Following five years of military service he enrolled in the City University of New York. After earning his bachelor's degree, he went on to post-graduate study, earning a law degree from New York Law School in 1960 and an MBA degree from Columbia University.

In 1969, Llewellyn bought Fedco Foods Corporation - a chain of 10 food stores located in the economically devastated South Bronx. Initially grossing a mere $18,000,000 annually, the company had become the nation's largest minority owned retail business - with 29 supermarkets, 900 employees, and gross annual revenue of $100,000,000 - when Llewellyn sold it in 1984.

Llewellyn purchased The Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Company in 1985. While at the helm, Llewellyn, the only African American among Coke's 394 U.S. bottlers, has built an enterprise that produces nearly 40 million cases of Coke products a year and garners $400 million in annual sales