Faces of Ace: Tor Newman

January 3, 2022

Welcome to the second installment of our revamped series, Faces of Ace. Last month you met our Director of Sales, Rod Moyer. This month, meet Ace CEO Tor Newman who has been with Ace for approximately 16 years. Not your average boss, Tor has a black belt in the Japanese martial art aikido, attended Berklee College of Music, and used to play the saxophone in a funk rock band in NYC. Read on to learn more about Tor…

Tor’s first foray into the food industry took place In 1990, when he got a job working in a now-defunct health food store called Sunrise Natural Foods on New York’s Houston St. “I was the juice bar guy,” Tor says. “I was the juice bar guy, but with ambition to be the store buyer. And that’s what I ended up doing for another store later on.”

By the early ’90s, he’d moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and was the general manager of the health food store Integral Yoga Natural Foods. He also started a café food service called Veggie Heaven. “I’ve always been interested in restaurants and cafés, foodservice,” says Tor. “That’s a big draw there for me.”

Tor describes the family he grew up in as “pretty food-oriented,” adding that his mother was very interested in healthy eating. She was also 100% Italian. “Food was very much a part of our family culture,” says Tor. His father’s attitude towards food was similar. “He comes from a Russian Jewish background and food was always a big part of the culture. We’ve always been very interested in food. I’m fascinated with restaurants and I love eating out, all kinds of different cuisines—eating interesting and unusual things and seeing how different people make different things. But I also really love serving and selling healthy food that tastes great. That’s a big thing, a double whammy for me.”

Long before he was working in the food industry, Tor was exploring his fascination with cuisine by cooking at home. “When I was nine and my brother was 12 and my sister was 15, my mom decided that we all needed to help out more so we started really, really cooking,” says Tor. “I’m sure I learned things before that age and my sister and brother learned well before those ages, but that was when we actually started cooking for the family. We would pair up with either my father or my mother and make dinner for everyone.”

These days, the dish he cooks most often is a lentil soup with pasta called Pasta E Lenticchie. “It’s hard for me to believe now, but I really hated all beans when I was a kid,” remembers Tor. “My mother was always trying different ways of making them to get me to eat them and this soup was my first real introduction to beans or legumes of any kind that I liked.” Today, he often makes the soup for his family: “It’s really healthy comfort food, and it’s especially good for the cold months of the year.”

When it comes to food ideologies, Tor has tried most things. “I’ve been vegan, I’ve been just vegetarian, I’ve been vegan and gluten-free,” he says, laughing. “I have been whatever it’s called when you pretty much eat whatever and don’t worry about, even the quality of food that you’re eating. I’ve tried pretty much all of the different things. Lately, I’ve been really trying to go further back to my vegetarian roots. It doesn’t always work out for me, though.”

Because of his heritage, Italy was always on Tor’s bucket list of places to travel. And after visiting Italy in 2018, he says that it was everything he could have hoped for: “It was an amazing experience. Being in a place that’s not only objectively beautiful, but also feeling connected to it through my family. We traveled from south to north, visiting Salerno and the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Naples, Tuscany, Florence, and Venice.”

Tor’s perfect Saturday involves cool weather—think 50 or 55 degrees—and waking up on the later side. “Like 8:30, 9:00,” Tor laughs. “I’d go for a nice long run and then come home and hang out with my family. Maybe play with my kids, do some reading, maybe do some work. And then go out to dinner with my wife and friends.”

Thank you, Tor!