Private, High

Publix Supermarkets (Lakeland, Fla.) was the fifth-largest company — and largest retail organization — in Forbes Magazine's 2002 edition of Largest Private Companies in the United States.

Publix, the largest employee-owned supermarket chain in the U.S., had $15.3 billion in revenues in 2001 from its 684 supermarkets throughout Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

Meijer (Grand Rapids, Mich.) was seventh on the Forbes list with $10.6 billion in revenues. It operates 157 hypermarkets in five states (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois) and is still owned by the Meijer family.

Other privately owned retail organizations in the Top 25 on the Forbes list included: HE Butt Grocery (San Antonio, Texas), number 9; Menard (Eau Claire, Wis., home-improvement retailer), number 19; Giant Eagle (Pittsburgh-based supermarket chain), number 22; and Levi Strauss & Co. (San Francisco-based apparel manufacturer and retailer), number 23.

The four top companies on the list ahead of Publix were: 1, Cargill (Minneapolis), a marketer, processor and distributor of agricultural, food, financial and industrial products and services; 2, Koch Industries (Wichita, Kansas), a diversified company in the chemicals, energy, environ tech, ranching and financial services industries; 3, Mars Inc. (McLean, Va.), the consumer products (M&Ms, Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, etc.) company also involved in automated payment systems and drink vending equipment; and 4, PricewaterhouseCoopers (New York), the accounting and financial services company.