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George Haseotes, a member of one of the most prominent Greek American entrepreneurial families in the United States who helped lead Cumberland Farms, the convenience-store and fuel-station chain that became a fixture of daily life across the Northeast, died on March 18 in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 94.
Haseotes died at Good Samaritan Medical Center after a brief illness, surrounded by his children, other family members, and close friends, his family said.
His death came eight days shy of 46 years after the passing of his father, Vasilios Spiros Haseotes, who died on March 26, 1980—a man who had arrived in America in 1907 as a 15-year-old from Politsani, a village in the Epirus region of northern Greece, then under Ottoman rule. From that beginning—as it is frequently reported, starting with $84 and a single cow on a 110-acre farm in Cumberland, R.I.—the Haseotes family built a business that would ultimately operate more than 600 convenience stores and supply gasoline to some 2,500 service stations from New England to Florida.
George Haseotes helped make that happen. Working alongside his brothers Byron and Demetrios, he held a pivotal role in growing Cumberland Farms from a regional dairy operation into one of the largest family-owned companies in the country. He also owned dairy and cattle farms in upstate New York and, with his wife, became a major real estate investor and developer in Florida and elsewhere.
But those who knew him best said it was not the scale of the enterprise that distinguished him. It was his character.
“He was a special person who would certainly say, ‘I did it my way,’” said Dean Metropoulos, the Greek American investor, prominent supporter of the Greek Orthodox Church and close friend. Mr. Metropoulos called Mr. Haseotes “a good human with a special life and ancestry, with love and pride for his family, and a very astute businessman who contributed to many whom he dealt with and certainly left his mark on we who knew him.”
A Family Forged in Faith and Labor
The Haseotes story is, at its core, a Greek immigrant narrative inseparable from the Greek Orthodox Church. Vasilios Haseotes was a founding member of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox parish in Pawtucket, R.I., and of the St. George parish in Centerville, Mass. In the 1960s, the late Archbishop Iakovos bestowed upon him the title of Archon Depoutatos in recognition of his devotion to the Church. He was also a supporter of St. Basil Academy in Garrison, N.Y., the Archdiocesan institution that has cared for children in need for decades.
Among Vasilios’s children, Demetrios, who died in 2017, was a member of Leadership 100, the philanthropic organization that supports the ministries of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, and a longtime supporter of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church. Vasilios’s daughter Lily Haseotes Bentas, the longtime chairwoman of Cumberland Farms, is likewise a member of Leadership 100.
The family’s philanthropic reach also extended back to Greece. The Vasilios S. and Aphrodite B. Haseotes Family Foundation funded the construction of the Haseotes Middle School at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki, which opened in 2019, as well as the refurbishment of a library at that storied institution. The Foundation has also supported the Hellenic Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Canton, Mass., the Perkins School for the Blind and Massachusetts General Hospital.
George Haseotes’s funeral service was scheduled for today, March 30, at the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church, 97 Walcott Street, Pawtucket, R.I.—the very parish his father helped found.
From One Cow to 600 Stores
George Haseotes was one of eight children born to Vasilios and Aphrodite Bassis Haseotes, who settled and raised their family in Cumberland, R.I. The origin of the business is now part of New England lore: in 1939, with $84 and a single cow, the couple started a dairy farm. Within six years they were selling 1,000 quarts of milk a day.
As George K. Regan Jr. wrote in a tribute composed for the family, the young George Haseotes spent a year studying—and boxing—at the University of Rhode Island, but when his brother Demetrios left to serve in the Korean War, he returned home to work the farm, milking cows and handling the daily grind of the growing operation. Mrs. Haseotes recalled that his mother cried when he walked down the driveway with his bags.
In the 1950s, the family opened its first dairy store in Bellingham, Mass., initially selling half-gallon and gallon jugs of milk. The location soon added other products, effectively creating New England’s first true convenience store. The company later moved into gasoline sales, purchasing Gulf Oil and Chevron service stations across 10 Northeastern states in the mid-1980s and roughly 200 Exxon stations in 2003.
The Haseotes family also purchased what was then the second-largest cranberry-growing company in the world in the mid-1970s, subsequently enhancing and selling that business a decade later to help finance the acquisition of Gulf Oil assets. Their knack for location—a corner spot with easy access at the intersection of two streets was always the preference—became legendary in the industry.
By the time Cumberland Farms was acquired by EG Group, the United Kingdom-based fuel and convenience retailer, in 2019, the chain had roughly 600 stores and 9,000 employees across eight states.
The Man, Not the Numbers
His wife, Kristen Williams Haseotes, described her husband as one of “the smartest, toughest, and sweetest men I have ever known. He was a giant, but in the end his greatest accomplishment in his eyes was his children and grandchildren.”
Friends and relatives said that what set him apart was not his wealth but his presence. As Regan noted, he answered every phone call on the first ring. He met with nephews to teach them the rhythms of business and life. He spent summers holding informal master classes at restaurants on the South Shore of Massachusetts.
His nephew D.B. Haseotes recalled that his uncle’s defining quality was relational. “What truly made him special was the relationships he had and treasured that spanned generations,” he said. “If Uncle George respected you, you knew it. His tenacity for work, his love for family and willingness to help friends is something that was truly incredible to watch and learn from.”
A Legacy Measured in More Than Stores
The Haseotes family belonged to a tradition of Greek American enterprise in which business, church and community were not separate pursuits but expressions of the same obligation. Vasilios Haseotes had spent time in Istanbul as a boy, where, according to the Washington Oxi Day Foundation, he “was inspired by the Holy City and its Orthodox Church.” That inspiration traveled with him across the Atlantic and down the generations—from the founding of parishes to membership in Leadership 100 to the building of a school that bears the family name in Thessaloniki.
George Haseotes’s son, George Williams Haseotes, told Boston 25 News that the legacy his father leaves behind is immense. “George is one of the three brothers that built that business,” he said. “His first quality was the intense loyalty he had to his family and to driving the business and developing it into what it was.”
Cumberland Farms was, for generations of Northeasterners, where you stopped before work, after Little League, on the way to the beach. The Haseotes family built that enterprise—and the civic and ecclesiastical institutions around it—from a place of deep conviction. At a moment when so much of business feels detached from place and people, the life of George Haseotes offers a corrective. Not every “business empire” worth remembering is glamorous. Some begin with milk.
Biographical details in this obituary were drawn from a tribute composed by George K. Regan Jr. for the Haseotes family, from the press release issued by the family on March 21, 2026, and from archival materials of the Washington Oxi Day Foundation, the American Farm School, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Boston 25 News and the Providence Business News.
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