FOOD & FASHION

Worldwide, nearly 500 billionaires have cooked up success or sewn their way to three commas, making their fortunes in food and beverage or fashion and retail. That includes 44 newcomers behind some of the world’s most famous brands.

Todd Graves

$9.1 billion • Fast food • U.S.

A Louisiana State University professor once gave Graves low marks for his business plan to open a restaurant selling only chicken tenders. Undeterred, he worked as a boilermaker and salmon fisher to save up the cash and get an SBA loan to start Raising Cane’s in 1996. It’s now a $3.3 billion (sales) fast food giant.

William Goldring

$6 billion • Liquor • U.S. Goldring’s $3 billion (est. sales) Sazerac Company owns top-shelf spirits brands Pappy Van Winkle and George T. Stagg, plus lower-tier swill Fireball, Southern Comfort and Goldschläger.

Molly Miao

$4.2 billion • Fast fashion • China

The chief marketing officer of fast-growing fast fashion retailer Shein debuts along with Maggie Gu, Shein’s general manager, and Ren Xiaoqing, a director. Shein’s plans to go public in New York this year appear in limbo amid U.S.-China tensions. Public or not, the e-tailer is not giving up on the American market, having partnered with Forever 21 on an online brand. It also hired a U.S. government relations veteran and is opening a new office in the Seattle area, expanding its U.S. team of more than

1,500 employees.

Michael Latifi

$3.4 billion • Meat processing • Canada Latifi’s first job was flipping burgers as a teenager at McDonald’s. Now he runs the $5.8 billion (est. revenue) Sofina Foods, an Ontario-based meat processing giant, and owns a 10% stake in McLaren’s Formula 1 Team.

Alessandro Rosano

$1.4 billion • Shoes • Italy The publicity-shy Rosano bootstrapped his comfort-focused HeyDude shoe brand, which flew off the racks during the pandemic, before selling out to Crocs in 2022 for $2.5 billion in cash and stock.

Takaya Awata

$1.2 billion • Noodles • Japan

The college dropout started a Japanese-style grilled chicken eatery but found big success when he switched to fresh udon noodles in 2000. His fast-growing, Tokyo-listed Toridoll now has more than 1,900 restaurants in Japan, China, Singapore, Europe and the U.S.

Jean Madar

$1.1 billion • Fragrances • France

The co-CEO and cofounder of New York– and Paris-based Interparfums launched the luxury fragrance distributor with fellow newcomer Philippe Benacin while at the ESSEC business school in Paris. He runs U.S. operations of the firm, which makes perfumes and colognes for such brands as Coach, Jimmy Choo and Montblanc.