By Angela Montefinise

Across the bustling borough of Queens, businesses big and small have made names for themselves, not only within the borough’s borders, but across New York City, the state and, in some cases, the country.
Of these successful businesses, there are some that stand out far in front of the others in terms of the business bottom line – revenue.
Based on the latest numbers available, the following businesses are the top revenue generators in Queens.

LeFrak Organization
97-77 Queens Blvd., Rego Park
(718) 459-9021
www.lefrak.com
Revenue: $3.8 million
Employees: 16,200; local, 2,500
CEO: Richard LeFrak
Industry: Real Estate
Private Company

Since 1905, the LeFrak family has been leaving its mark in Queens, building residential, commercial and office space that today totals over 63 million square feet and billions of dollars in property values.

The Rego Park-based real estate company prides itself on “responsible community development,” “affordable housing,” and being “sensitive to environmental preservation,” according to its website.

Prior to establishing the LeFrak Organization in America, the LeFrak family had been builders in Europe for two generations. Maurice LeFrak started it all as a developer in France in the 1840s. Toward the turn of the century, Maurice’s son, Aaron, and grandson, Harry, came to New York City and began a modest building company, mainly developing apartments for immigrants on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Harry LeFrak also designed and manufactured customized glass for Louis Comfort Tiffany.

The company grew, and eventually targeted Queens. It constructed the Park Vendome in Queens, the world’s first high-rise residential-retail-commercial-judicial office building complex, for which Frank Lloyd Wright worked as a consultant, and the LeFrak Tower, the first modern office skyscraper in Queens, and the focal point for a new five-building mid-city office complex.

One of the company’s greatest triumphs was LeFrak City, a gargantuan complex of 18-story buildings with 5,000 apartments, sprawling across 40 acres of land adjacent to the bustling Long Island Expressway in Queens.

Harry LeFrak passed the business on to his son Sam, who died in 2003 at age 85. His son Richard is now head of the business, which may be a multibillion-dollar entity, but is still kept in the family.

Le Frak City, one of the LeFrak organization's real estate ventures, has helped put the Rego Park busines on the top in terms of revenue in the borough

Kinray Inc
152-35 10th Ave., Whitestone
(800) 854-6729, (718) 767-1234
www.kinray.com
Revenue: $3.3 billion
Employees: 700
CEO: Stewart Rahr
Industry: Wholesale Pharmaceutical Distribution
Private Company

When a Brooklyn-based pharmaceutical distributor was on the verge of shutting its doors for good in 1940, a young and determined Stewart Rahr stepped in and took over, modernizing the facility and taking it to new heights.

More than 60 years later, the company now called Kinray supplies over 2,000 independent pharmacies in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Delaware with wholesale pharmaceutical products, as well as health and beauty care products.

In fact, the business has grown into the largest privately-held wholesaler of pharmaceutical/generic and health and beauty care products in the world, and was listed as number 10 on Crain’s New York Business Magazine’s top 200 privately-held firms in the New York tri-state area in 2003.

Kinray offers same day service to its clients and a guarantee that 99 percent of its catalogue will be in stock.

JetBlue
118-29 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills
(718) 286-7900
www.jetblue.com
Revenue: $1.070 million
Employees: 4,783
CEO: David Neeleman
Industry: Airline Travel
Public Company

On Feb. 11, 2000, the face of air travel changed when JetBlue Airlines took to the sky.

The Forest Hills-based airline, which was founded by airline expert CEO David Neeleman, prides itself on quality service, modern technology and affordable prices, and offers flights to 24 cities around the country from JFK Airport.

JetBlue uses a fleet of 60 brand new environmentally friendly Airbus A32 airplanes, each with a joystick as a steering device, all-leather seats and television sets for each passenger. The televisions are wired into DirectTV, and show 26 different channels, including ESPN, Animal Planet and Nickelodeon.

Charmer Industries
19-50 48th St., Astoria
(718) 726-2500
www.charmer.com
Revenue: $790 million
Employees: 1,000
CEO: Herman Merinoff
Industry: Wholesale Liquor Distribution
Private Company

Charmer Industries, a member of the Charmer-Sunbelt Group of wholesale liquor distributors, is one of the nation’s leading distributors of fine wines, champagnes, cordials, spirits, beers, bottled water and non-alcoholic products.

Recently, the company has made major improvements to its warehouse, routing, and information technology systems in order to change with the times. Charmer also implemented bar coding and a temperature-controlled storage system.

The Merinoff family runs the business, with CEO Herman Merinoff heading the company.

Standard Motor Products
37-18 Northern Blvd., LIC
(718) 392-0200
www.smpcorp.com
Revenue: $747 million
Employees: 3,300
CEO: Lawrence I. Sills
Industry: Auto Replacement Parts
Public Company

Standard Motor Products is one of the largest manufacturers of automotive replacement parts in the world.

The company, which has been headquartered in Long Island City for more than 75 years, is broken into two parts. One, it supplies engine management parts such as ignition and emission parts, onboard computers, ignition wires, battery cables and fuel system parts. Second, it manufactures and remanufactures temperature control parts such as air conditioning compressors and other air conditioning and heating parts.

Standard Motor makes and supplies parts for all makes of cars and trucks – domestic and imported – as well as new and older vehicles.

National Envelope Corp
29-10 Hunterspoint Ave., Long Island City
(718) 784-0505
www.nationalenvelope.com
Revenue: $650 million
Employees: 5,000; local, 350
CEO: Leslie Stern
Industry: Envelope Manufacturing
Private Company

In 1952, an entrepreneur named William Unger opened a small envelope manufacturing plant in Long Island City, starting what would become the largest privately held envelope manufacturer in the United States.

The company manufactures and distributes envelopes coast to coast, and offers everything from commercial and official “regulars” to custom designed booklets for special direct mail uses.

The company’s slogan is, “If it’s considered an envelope, we make it.”

National Envelope Corporation makes about 160 million envelopes a day, with products including envelopes with windows, translucent envelopes, booklet-style envelopes, envelopes with clasps, and presentation folders.

Currently, Leslie Stern is CEO, but Unger’s son in law Nathan Moser is CFO, keeping the family business in the family.

Jetro Cash and Carry Enterprises
15-24 132nd St., College Point
(718) 762-8700
www.jetro.com
Revenue: $430 million
Employees: 900 to 1,000
CEO: Stanley Fleishman
Industry: Wholesale Grocery
Private Company

Restaurants may be the ones to serve up delicious meals for Queens residents, but before the chefs do their stuff, the borough’s culinary hot spots need to buy their food, equipment and supplies from somewhere.

Jetro Cash And Carry Enterprises is where many of them go.

The company offers wholesale restaurant and catering supplies, food preparation equipment, take-out containers, and food.

Jetro operates 13 stores across the country in New York City, Jersey City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Oakland, Long Beach, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. Its corporate offices are in College Point, as is one of its stores.

The chain works a lot like Costco – members have cards, they scan into a store, and shop until they’ve had their fill.

Besides operating actual stores, Jetro also has an export department in Miami, and exports materials out of the country to places including Jamaica, the Bahamas, Haiti, Turks & Caicos, Honduras, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and most small islands in the Caribbean.

Western Beef
47-05 Metropolitan Ave., Ridgewood
(718) 417-3770
www.westernbeef.com
Revenue: $417 million
Employees: 2,000; local, 800
CEO: Peter Castellana, Jr.
Industry: Retail Supermarket
Private Company

The key to Western Beef's success is its detailed demographic research, which shows what types of items should be sold in stores based on the population.

Inner city and ethnic neighborhoods are often abandoned by major supermarket chains because those chains don’t believe they can turn a profit in low-income or culturally specific areas.

Ridgewood-based Western Beef has closed the gap, and has showed those supermarket chains that turning a profit in these areas can be done.

According to Western Beef’s website, it combines complex market research and demographic studies to determine which areas in New York City and New Jersey are in need of supermarkets. Once Western Beef chooses a location, the company then analyzes the surrounding population, and provides products that are ethnically and culturally in demand.

The company currently operates 21 supermarkets and four outlet stores in New York City and New Jersey, including four stores in Queens – one in Ridgewood, one in Flushing, one in Springfield Gardens and one in Astoria. Western Beef also operates an outlet store in South Ozone Park.

Realizing that many of its customers hail from foreign countries, Western Beef supplies the ingredients that complete their favorite recipes. Customers who need exotic fruits and vegetables can easily find yucca, yampi, passion fruit, sapote, kirby, appio and ajicito in Western Beef stores.

Major Automotives
43-40 Northern Blvd., Long Island City
(718) 937-3700
www.majorworld.com
Revenue: $380.3 million
Employees: 400
CEO: Bruce Bendell
Industry: Car Sales
Public Company

Ever since its early beginnings in 1985, Major Auto has been a leader in car sales in the borough.

Bruce Bendell got started in the car dealer industry early.

He started buying cars for re-sale in 1976 while earning his B.A. in economics and accounting from Queens College.

In 1985, he purchased Major Chevrolet, a marginal dealership with 10 million dollars in sales, employing two people. By 1992 under his leadership, Major had become the largest dealership in New York State.

Today, Major Automotives is one of the top car dealers in the city, with Bendell acting as CEO.

Major’s facilities now include Nissan, Kia, Volkswagen, Hummer, Toyota, GMC, BMW and a host of others, and cover a 22-acre site. Major Fleet, another division, has also been added, giving Major a commercial vehicle leasing option.

Leviton Manufacturing Co.
59-25 Little Neck Pkwy., Little Neck
(718) 229-4040
www.leviton.com
Revenue: $350 million
Employees: 5,000; local, 650
Industry: Wiring devices, lighting controls, voice and data products
CEO: Harold Leviton
Private Company

At the turn of the 20th century, while the world was changing and technology was becoming more complex, the Leviton Manufacturing Company opened its doors in Little Neck.

When it first opened in 1906, Leviton engaged only in the fabrication of mantle tips for gas lighting. Soon, though, Leviton converted to production of a single electrical product – a pull-chain lampholder.

Today, Leviton’s product offering comprises more than 20,000 distinct catalog numbers, and the company stands as a leader in the electrical industry as it serves industrial, commercial and residential markets through retail and distribution channels.

The company, a business still run by the Leviton family, also offers an enormous selection of cords, wires and cables produced by its subsidiary, American Insulated Wire.
The company sells its products to distributors and to big name chains like Home Depot, Sears and Wal-Mart.