At age 28, TJ Murphy, chief executive officer for Baldor Specialty Foods Inc., in the Bronx, NY, already has a vision of what the future landscape of the food industry will look like decades down the road.

Murphy is the son of Kevin Murphy, founder of the company, who died last year at age 58 from cancer. But TJ has worked for the company since 2002, given a couple of gaps to study at school.

“I still have my original employee ID from when Dad made you fill out a job application in 2002,” Murphy told The Produce News. “I was 16 then, and I worked during the summer between my junior and senior high school years.

“After I graduated, I continued to work for the company while at the same time attending a near by community college,” he continued. “But at the time I didn’t feel totally invested in either endeavor.”

Chrissy and TJ Murphy enjoy traveling, experiencing new foods and meeting chefs. They are expecting their first child in June.He noted that his father always told him that he needed to do one of a couple of things — go to school, go to work or even travel a little to see if it helped him make a decision about his life’s path, assuring his support in whatever decision his son made.

Murphy soon decided that school was not as intriguing as working in the family business, and after a couple of semesters he started working full-time at Baldor.

For a while, Murphy felt “fully dialed into the work.” He started by unloading trailers on the dock level, and then moved into dispatching.

Then he had another change of heart. It was the second summer following graduation — at age 19 — when he decided that he had not given school the full “crack” it deserved, and so decided to try again.

A colleague’s brother worked at University of Colorado-Boulder, and Murphy had spent a lot of time in the state snowboarding, so he knew he really liked it there. And he felt that being separated from the family business geographically would help to inspire him to make a deeper investment into his studies.

“I moved to Colorado and started going to a small SEED college, which was sort of a prep school to help me improve my grades so that I could enter CU,” he explained. “I was there for a few semesters, working part-time. But the realization once again came to me that school just wasn’t for me. I had never gravitated to it, and being so far away from New York wasn’t inspiring me. I realized that I am a single-focus person; I like to invest all of my energy into one thing.”

The following January 2004, he was back in New York for Baldor’s Christmas party. That’s when he made the firm decision to make his career in the family business and not return to school.

“I immediately jumped right back into the business doing same-day order picking, working from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” Murphy said. “From there, I moved to same-day dispatching, which involves distributing orders for selection, assigning drivers, getting trucks on the road and basically putting out fires all day and then getting the trucks back. After about six months, I spent time in receiving, checking quality, counting and other related tasks.”

At this point, Murphy had learned about most of the aspects related to what is done on the dock, and soon he was “pulled upstairs” into administrative aspects. He worked as a sales assistant, tasked with data entry.

“I supported one of our teams that handles pricing, contract pricing, issues related to same-day replenishments, house accounts and other contract issues,” he explained.

“I worked on the sales team that managed national and contract house accounts. Some of these include major hotel groups such as Starwoods, Marriotts and Hiltons, as well as hotels such as the Four Seasons, the Carlyle, the Plaza, the Mark and many others. We handled all their contract pricing and customer service needs.”

After gaining strong experience in this aspect, he moved into buying.

Baldor is recognized as a cutting-edge specialty food distributor. It has several divisions which include meats and dairy, but it is particularly strong in fresh produce, and it procures only the highest quality produce from around the world.

Kevin Murphy founded the company in 1991 when his father-in-law and owner of Balducci Specialty Market in New York City decided that the distribution division of the company needed to be separated from the popular retail store.

A few years later, Michael Muzyk, joined the company. And with what is known as a fiery passion for things to be done right, and a strong ability to protect the company and his boss from potentially harmful aspects, he ultimately rose to become company president. Murphy acknowledged that Muzyk is an outstanding mentor and friend.

On Dec. 30, 2010, during a winter getaway at the family’s Montauk home, Murphy took the romantic opportunity to propose to his wife, Chrissy. The couple was married on Aug. 14, 2011. They are excitedly looking forward to their first child, a girl, with a due date of June 18.

Chrissy Murphy is an attorney and was working with a firm when the couple met. When the realization came that Kevin Murphy was terminally ill, Murphy told her that she was needed in the business. She is now in-house council.

“She can do most of her work from home, which will be very helpful when the baby is born,” said Murphy. “This turned out to be a perfect arrangement for our family as well as for Baldor.”

The couple shares a passion for the business, and they are “extreme food people.” They enjoy spending their free time doing things that are somehow connected to Baldor, such as traveling, trying new restaurants, meeting chefs and even visiting farming operations wherever they travel. They are also wine aficionados, and are amassing a personal collection.

Chrissy played soccer for Cornell University, and she plays on a soccer league, which is temporarily postponed due to her pregnancy. They both enjoy playing softball, and play often with friends.

“Surfing and snowboarding are my true sport passions, however,” Murphy admitted. “The beauty of traveling that allows us to enjoy and experience food and wine, and enables me to surf or snowboard, is the perfect all-around pastime for me. Chrissy is an able surfer, but I’m really into it in a major way.”

Murphy said that he believes that in the future, consumers will be much more educated than they are today. Although this trend that is already apparent in people wanting to know where their food is from and how it was produced, he thinks is going to grow much stronger. And he feels that many new products will be introduced to American consumers from other parts of the world.

“We have hardly scratched the surface of what foods are available in the world that we don’t have here,” he said. “Today, it’s French white asparagus, Italian chicories, truffles and meats. Food items such as these will continue to become more accessible from around the world, and that will enable people to experience an endless array of new flavors and textures in the years to come.”

He also sees Baldor continuing to be a leader in the food supply industry in the future.

“Rather than personal aspirations, I just want to take this wonderful business that I have had the good fortune to inherit and insure that it continues to set the bar. If I have a goal, it is to leave it in even better condition than when I entered it for the next generation that follows.”