David Trone will speak at the dinner meeting of the Potomac-Bethesda Rotary Club on Thursday, Feb. 15, which starts at 6:30 p.m. and meets at Normandie Farm Restaurant (10710 Falls Road, Potomac, MD).Mr. Trone is co-owner of Total Wine and More. He will speak about how he and his brother grew their business from zero to $2.7 billion in revenue. He is also a candidate for the Democratic nomination to represent Maryland’s 6th Congressional District.
Born in Cheverly, Maryland, Mr. Trone was raised on a working farm near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. With no indoor plumbing for a year and a father with no experience in farming, David and his brothers carried much of the load, selling eggs, cleaning hog pens and chicken houses, and all the other work farming requires.
David learned his first business lessons the hard way: watching his father struggle with the finances of the family farm. His family lost the farm, but he gained valuable lessons about failure, success, and the value of persistence and hard work. These lessons were the foundation of the successful business career he began soon thereafter.
David earned a BA from Furman University (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and a MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
David opened his first store while he was a graduate student.
From one store in 1991, David has built Total Wine & More into the largest private wine retailer in the country, with almost $2.7 billion in annual revenue from 181 stores in 22 states. Of almost 6,000 employees nationwide, over 500 are based at the headquarters in Bethesda.