John P Bauer

Early life and career

Bauer was born in Furth, Germany in 1925. His family had founded South German Food Products Works two generations earlier, which was the largest meat processing plant in Germany. Growing up in Germany one of his childhood friends was Henry Kissinger. Bauer's family moved to Paris in 1934 to escape the Nazi regime, where they remained until 1940.

That year the family moved to New York City, where his father established a new food products company: BNS International Inc. The company became the world's largest exporter of poultry products during the 1950s and 1960s. Bauer joined the US military soon after he arrived in New York, enlisting in the U.S. Army's Intelligence Service during World War II between 1942 and 1944. He began working for the family company in 1946, and remained with the company until his father's death in 1965. He moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1974.

Basic Food International

Bauer is the CEO and president of Basic Food International Inc, a global supplier of canned, frozen and packaged food products based in Fort Lauderdale. The company was purchased by Bauer and a team of investors in May 1979, with 40% of shipments going to the Middle East, 30% to the Far East, and the rest divided among Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. In 1992 Bauer was named the International Trader of the Year Award by the World Trade Council. Florida Secretary of Commerce Gregg Farmer also named his company Florida's top international trade company when Bauer received the award at the 1992 Florida Governor`s Conference on World Trade and Enterprise Florida.

In 1993 the company had $83 million in revenues, primarily from the global export of frozen vegetable, meat and poultry products. That year Steven Shundich reported that "35% of the company's trade partners were from the Far East, 25% from Latin America, 15% from the Middle East, 15% from Eastern Europe, and 10% from Scandinavia. Clients distribute Basic Food International products to airlines, cruise ships, fast food restaurant chains (mushrooms for Pizza Hut, for example), school cafeterias and even Latin American armies."

Public life

Bauer has served as an Honorary Consul to Guatemala, an economic advisor to the City of Fort Lauderdale, and has sat on the board of directors for the Broward Economic Development Council. He was also named an Honorary Deputy Sheriff of Broward County and served as chairman of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce's International Business Advisory Board, which he helped to develop in 1994.

In 1995 Bauer led an effort to stop the Florida Public Service Commission from changing the Broward County telephone area code to 954, claiming that it would block business calls from the developing world and cost the region international trade opportunities due to underdeveloped telephone infrastructure in some foreign countries. After the county selected the area code it became the only county in the US with a global business base to have an area code without a "1" or "0" in the middle of it, making it unreachable by some foreign telephone networks, which Bauer believed would cause a business "calamity".

In 2005 Bauer was named to the board of directors for the Broward Community College Foundation. In 2011 he was appointed to the U.S. Agricultural Advisory Committee. As a philanthropist he has contributed to the Boys and Girls Club of South Broward, Covenant House, Hospice Care, and the Youth Automotive Training Center.