Alfredo Coto

Alfredo Coto (born October 9, 1941) is a prominent Argentine businessman.

Alfredo Coto was born in Buenos Aires in 1941. His father, Joaquín Coto, was an immigrant from Galicia (Spain), and the owner of a small butcher shop in the Retiro section of the city. Working alongside his father from age nine, and joining him in neighborhood deliveries, Coto became a wholesaler in 1963, buying rump roast and other cuts from a Kosher butcher who could not use them. He opened his own, Boedo neighborhood retail butcher in 1969, and managed the shop with his wife, Gloria.

Building on the customer base that the couple had cultivated through wholesale delivery, Coto owned 20 shops by 1976, and began supplying steakhouses. He purchased a cattle ranch in 1978, and in 1981, a slaughterhouse, thus becoming his own supplier. Coto's success made him a target, however, and in 1981, he was held for 11 days in a ransom kidnapping.

Operating 34 retail outlets by 1987, each averaging around 40 tons of beef and offal sales a month, he opened his first supermarket in Mar de Ajó (a seaside tourist destination).Coto Supermarkets expanded rapidly afterwards, and in 1992, he opened his first hypermarket. The company opened five shopping malls from the late 1990s onwards (each anchored by a Coto hypermarket), as well as a wholesale distribution and production center in Monte Grande.

The chain, a sole proprietorship, remained a private company; a Clarín article at the time, however, outlined that by 1996, it netted over a billion US dollars in sales, and that its net income exceeded US$31 million.

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