ROB LABONNE

Supermarkets and self storage. Entrepreneurs' Organization Member, BJJ dabbler, waterskier & conservationist.

My Story

My name is Rob LaBonne. I’m a CT based entrepreneur where I spend my days taking a 4th generation family supermarket business into the 21st century while growing a self storage portfolio on the side.

Growing up I always preferred working for myself and spent little time in the family grocery business. Why would I work for my father for minimum wage when i could make 4x as much landscaping on my own? This turned into a landscape construction company that I co-founded with a friend which we operated from the end of high school into my college years.

From there I bought a local tent rental company with a commercial bank loan and grew the business over 2 seasons before selling it to a police officer who planned to make it his retirement gig. During this time I started a handful of ecommerce projects and a small web startup that never took off.

I ended up taking a job at a fast growing software company and built out their PPC and SEO initiatives in addition to handling sales demonstrations and trade shows.

After that it made sense to join the family business which was struggling due to a store acquisition that was not going well. The company was bleeding and it took us about 5 years to turn it around which included shutting down one store and then buying another. We are still paying off the loan for that one failed store which thankfully ends in March of 2024. Lots of hard lessons learned along the way.

Today I’m a minority partner in the family business where I lead the marketing, IT, and back office teams in addition to being the integrator utilizing the Entrepreneurial Operating System as our management framework. We currently have 4 stores, employ nearly 400 associates, service over 30,000 customers a week, and sell over 43,000 unique SKUs a year. I write a personalized weekly email newsletter that goes out to over 25,000 of our customers.

In March of 2020 I closed on my first piece of commercial real estate, a self storage facility that is located inside of a building originally used for manufacturing. I had met the previous owner back in 2016 and we would catch up every few months and talk about our shared interests. He eventually was ready to sell the business and I was able to make it happen thanks to an SBA loan at the time. I’m proud to say the previous owner and I are still friends to this day.

The storage business has more than doubled since purchasing it with one small expansion taking place in April of 2021, another large expansion opening in January 2024 and another even larger one scheduled for 2025. This process taught me about valuing commercial real estate, acquisitions, financing, re-financing, re-zoning, floodplain studies, civil and structural engineering, architecture, site work, and general contracting.

I have held various volunteer positions including being a board member and learning chair for the CT Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), Bantam Lake Ski Club, God Provides Ministries International, and my local town Board of Finance.

What’s next?

We will continue to grow the grocery business through strategic acquisitions of stores within 1 hour of where we operate that do a minimum of $10m/year in sales.

I will continue to acquire and develop self storage facilities while also being open to multi tenant light industrial if the right situation arises.

I am also actively seeking to acquire a majority stake in local recurring revenue service businesses. Examples include pest control, alarm monitoring, digital marketing agencies, specialized educational content, etc.

What else?

In my free time you'll find me running around with my 2 young children, travelling with my wife, waterskiing, training jiu jitsu, lifting weights, running a spartan race, working with my dog, hunting, fishing, reading a book, or listening to a podcast.

My core values are proactivity, honesty, appreciation, health, and kindness.

Get in Touch

You can contact me here or find me (@roblabonne) sharing my thoughts with over 20,000 people on X (formerly Twitter) where I talk about business, real estate, life, and anything else that comes to mind.