Alfredo Coto was born in Buenos Aires in 1941. His father, Joaquín Coto, was a Galician immigrant from Spain and the owner of a small butcher shop in the Retiro neighborhood of the city. Working alongside his father from the age of nine and helping with neighborhood deliveries, Coto became a wholesaler in 1963, purchasing meat in bulk and other cuts from a kosher butcher who couldn’t use them. He opened his own retail butcher shop in Boedo in 1969, managing the store with his wife, Gloria.
Building on the wholesale customer base the couple had cultivated, Coto owned 20 shops by 1976 and began supplying other butcheries. In 1978, he bought a ranch and livestock, and in 1981, he acquired a slaughterhouse, becoming his own supplier. Coto’s success made him a target; in 1981, he was kidnapped for ransom and held for 11 days.
By 1987, he operated 34 retail outlets, each averaging around 40 tons of meat sales per month. He opened his first supermarket in Mar de Ajó, a seaside tourist destination. Coto quickly expanded and, in 1992, opened his first hypermarket. From the 1990s onward, the company launched five shopping centers—each anchored by a Coto hypermarket—as well as a wholesale distribution and production center in Monte Grande.
The chain remained privately owned. According to a Clarín article from the time, by 1996, Coto had surpassed one billion US dollars in sales, with net profits exceeding US $31 million.
Coto and his chain were targeted for extortion in 1996 and 1997, when bombs were planted in five stores by the Revolutionary People’s Organization. Fortunately, Coto suffered no casualties or major damage, and the group was later apprehended by police.
In 2000, the French retailer Carrefour acquired the Norte chain, making Coto the largest domestically-owned supermarket retailer in Argentina. Overall, Coto remained third in the national market, behind Carrefour and Chilean-based Cencosud.