By Betsy Vereckey

Attending Dartmouth—first as an undergrad and later as a Tuck MBA student—was a turning point for Eric Winn T’14, who began working on lobster boats at eight years old alongside his father.

“I had a very blue-collar upbringing, so to go to Dartmouth was completely foreign to the environment I grew up in,” Winn says. “It was really good for me, coming from a small town in Rhode Island, to gain exposure to diversity and to people who were smart and ambitious.”

After graduating from Dartmouth with a bachelor’s in philosophy, Winn immediately took a position with C&S in Keene, N.H. Eight years in, he decided to earn an MBA to further his education so that he could eventually step into a leadership role.

By then, Winn was a father of two and married to a fellow Dartmouth graduate who was also working full-time at C&S. Winn didn’t want to go anywhere but Tuck and was so thrilled to get in that he took advantage of everything the school had to offer.

“I think if you ask my classmates, they would probably say I was maybe a little over-zealous at times,” he says, laughing.

Looking back on that time, he says that group work taught him the most. “We had a guy in our group from Spain, for whom English was a second language, and a wonderful woman from India, who I think had never been outside of India in her life, and now she’s having to do group work with me, some lobster guy from Rhode Island,” he says.

“Up until that point, I’d actually never had to work in a team, and I learned so much about interpersonal dynamics that still serve me to this day.”

While at Tuck, Winn and fellow classmate Mike Parshley T’14 cofounded The Box Food Truck, an idea that grew out of his Introduction to Entrepreneurship class. Starting The Box was no small feat in Hanover, where town regulations didn’t allow for food trucks. “There were so many people at the college who supported us and helped us figure out how to get it off the ground,” he recalls.

Now, as CEO of C&S, Winn relies on the problem-solving skills he learned at Tuck to navigate an industry that seems to be changing every day. “This industry is constantly evolving. The way that people buy their groceries has changed so much,” he says. “Our role is to figure out where the puck is going and to be clear about where we create value and who we can help and sometimes be the one directing where the puck is going.”

C&S helps grocers across the country, from single-store independent operators to regional chains and even some national chains, by taking on some of the heavy lifting for them in the supply chain. Also, C&S will help some customers run promotions and negotiate with suppliers on costs.

In the past, warehouses have often relied on human labor to operate forklifts and other machinery, but in the future, Winn sees robots taking on more of the heavy-lifting.

“The advantage of automation is that it can improve efficiency and quality in a consistent manner, while providing new career opportunities for our team members because of different roles supporting automated operations,” he says. “Automation is no longer futuristic—it is a present-day reality. It is our role to ensure it is applied in a way that creates value for us and our customers.”

Q+A

Tuck Professors I Still Think About: Professors Ella Bell, Adam Kleinbaum, Joe Hall, and the late Steven Kahl. I feel profound sadness over the passing of Professor Kahl, a great mentor and teacher. He and Professor Hall supported our mission to launch The Box Food Truck. Professor Bell was the most influential, helping me grow as a leader, husband, and father.

Favorite Tuck Traditions: The Tuck Partner and Tiny Tuckie networks were invaluable. Entering Tuck married with a one-year-old and another on the way, these activities integrated my family into the Tuck community.

Favorite Place to Eat in the UV and Core Tuck Memory: Launching The Box Food Truck during my second year stands out. My classmates and I built the business plan, raised investment, and ran operations, applying classroom concepts like Lean Startup principles. With guidance from Professor Kahl, we practiced workflows by simulating the truck’s interior layout in a Tuck building. This preparation saved us from operational failure on day one when we served nearly 300 first years at the spring kickoff. Though no longer run by Tuck students, the truck remains a thriving business in the Upper Valley—a testament to the Tuck network’s power.

This story originally appeared in print in the winter 2025 issue of Tuck Today magazine.