Former CEO of one of largest employee-owned corporations in U.S. dies at 81; business started with one rural grocery

Jimmie Gipson

Jimmie Gipson, who helped transform Kentucky's Houchens Industries from a rural grocery chain into a $3-billion-dollar conglomerate that is one of the largest employee-owned companies in the nation, died Saturday in Bowling Green. He was 81.

Gipson "spent 55 years with Houchens, the last 27 as the chief executive officer. He retired in March 2020, the Bowling Green Daily News reports. He was only the third CEO, following the nephew of the founder: "Ervin Houchens started the company in 1917 with a single grocery store."

Houchens offered stock to its employees long ago, when it was just a grocery chain, and since 1988 they have fully owned it. The company "owns over 25 operating companies in various industries including retail, manufacturing, construction, and insurance," its website says. Its most unusual purchase may have been in 2008, when it acquired the Louisville-based Hilliard Lyons brokerage firm and shared ownership with its employees until 2019.

“We never bought a company just to get bigger, and we never intended to buy a company that wasn’t run by good people,” Gipson told the Daily News in 2020. “If you do that, you’ll generally do well.” He called employee ownership “very gratifying. Years ago, we had a lady who worked in a Houchens store for 40 years. She had more than $480,000 in her retirement account. That’s life-changing for common people.”

Visitation for Gipson will be from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at J.C. Kirby & Sons Lovers Lane Chapel, and from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday at Hillvue Heights Church, where the funeral will begin at noon. Entombment will follow at Bowling Green Gardens.