Rio Cheesecakes lands major distribution deal with Performance Food Group

Rio Cheesecakes just moved from a neighborhood dessert experiment to a wholesale channel that reaches more than 300,000 customer locations. The gluten-free, single-serve frozen cheesecake business founded by Richmond chef Steve DeRaffele landed a distribution deal with Performance Food Group, putting the product in front of restaurants and catering customers along the East Coast.

For Goochland readers, the connection runs through Performance Food Group’s Richmond headquarters at 12500 West Creek Parkway and its role as one of North America’s largest food-service distributors. The company says it operates with 14,000 associates in 76 locations, and its 2025 annual report says it markets and distributes more than 250,000 food and food-related products from 155 distribution centers. That scale gives Rio a path far beyond the small number of cases it had sold so far.

Rio was launched earlier in 2026 out of the Hatch food-and-beverage incubator in South Richmond. DeRaffele said the idea grew from an old Italian family recipe and his severe gluten allergy. Before Rio became its own company, he sold the cheesecakes at Pinky’s, the Scott’s Addition restaurant he opened in July 2021 with a nearly 100% gluten-free menu.

DeRaffele’s path to this point runs through several well-known Richmond kitchens and food businesses. He worked at DeRaffele Manufacturing, Tarrant’s Cafe, Lunch/Supper and Brunch before opening Pinky’s. Pinky’s is named for his late mother, Karen “Pinky” DeRaffele, and the restaurant helped establish his reputation for gluten-free cooking long before the frozen dessert brand was spun out.

The new deal matters because it shows how a small specialty product can scale without building its own delivery network. A product that started in South Richmond and had only a few hundred cases behind it can now move through a distributor that already serves restaurants, caterers and institutional buyers across a huge territory. For Goochland, it is another reminder that one of the region’s biggest private-sector players is not just moving pallets, but helping decide which local food brands make it onto commercial menus next.