Building Big Business Through Smaller Ones. Experience gained firsthand as a foodservice business owner and operator for 36 years has been invaluable to both Howard Levrant and his customers. Levrant started at Cheney Brothers as a distributor sales representative in Miami 10 years ago, and is on target to sell close to $6 million this year and scheduled to do $8 million next year. “It’s a great thing that I can be on the sales and end the retail end—both sides of the coin,” says Levrant. “I’m not a salesman by trade; I’m a business owner/operator.”