New generation takes groceries new direction.Byline: JIM BOYD Jim Boyd may refer to:
THE GROCERY BUSINESS that Richard "Dick" Wright started in Cottage Grove Cottage Grove, village (1990 pop. 22,935), Washington co., SE Minn., near the St. Croix River; inc. 1965. There is farming (cattle, sheep, corn, and soybeans) and manufacturing (chemicals and machinery). 24 years ago has seen a lot of change, especially since his son, Richard "Rick" Wright Jr., joined the company a dozen years ago. Wright Sr. was facing a major fork in the road A fork in the road is a road bifurcation. The expression may also refer to one of the following:
There was another reason for recruiting the second generation. His wife, Marsha, wanted her children to be close. "We didn't want them spread all over the country," he said. "We wanted to be able to play with the grandkids when we wanted to." Today, Wright's Foodliner Inc., the parent company for the Market of Choice stores, has four second-generation family members active in the business. Rick Wright, the Wrights' older son, joined the company in 1990 and is now executive vice president and the heir-apparent for the presidency when his 64-year-old father retires. Two family members by marriage also hold executive positions: Lawrence "Larry" Brody, a certified public accountant Certified Public Accountant (CPA) An accountant who has met certain standards, including experience, age, and licensing, and passed exams in a particular state. who joined the company in 1989, is the chief financial officer. Marcus Whittaker, the company's personnel director, came on board shortly before his marriage to the Wrights' daughter Suzyn in 1998. The biggest change for the company has been one of product mix. The company has gone from selling a mainstream line of groceries at the lowest possible prices under the Price Chopper Price Chopper may refer to:
"Actually, it has been really good for me personally, because the kids have taken it to the next level," Wright said. "I took it to a certain point, and they've just taken it and ran with it. I think they kicked me in gear and sort of pushed me into things that I probably would not have done. I'm sort of the old school, you know. And they're always out there looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. the new, the next trend." Wright got into the grocery business when he was 16. "My mother went to the grand opening of a store in Whittier, Calif., and she came back and she said, 'They don't have enough help' ' he said. "So she put me in my brother's only white shirt and tie, took me down there, and the guy hired me on the spot. And I've been in the grocery business ever since. "I tried to get out of it a couple times," he said. "I went on to college and decided after college that I'd go to work for a large company. Didn't do very well in sales. I was a lousy lous·y adj. lous·i·er, lous·i·est 1. Infested with lice. 2. Extremely contemptible; nasty: a lousy trick. 3. salesman. So I got back into the grocery industry and been there ever since." Wright worked as a store manager for Mayfair and Albertson's, until he and his wife decided to move their family out of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . A friend told him about a job opening with a grocery chain in the Medford-Grants Pass area. He worked as general manager until the chain was sold nine or 10 years later. His relationship with the new owner wasn't so smooth, however. "So I decided to go in business for myself," he said. Surviving a recession The Wrights invested their life savings and built a Thriftway grocery store in Cottage Grove in 1978. The first years were good ones, Wright said. "Growth was good. The town was growing. Business was excellent. And then the early '80s came and the mills started shutting down in Cottage Grove, which at that time was basically a mill town," Wright recalls. "I kid around with people and tell them our biggest item was empty boxes for people moving out of town," he said. "And, luckily, we made it. We paid some 23 percent interest at that time. Interest rates went crazy. But we just put our heads down heads down - [Sun] Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything outside the focus area is missed. See also hack mode and larval stage, although this mode is hardly confined to fledgling hackers. . The family - you know, all the kids - worked in the store." Having survived the recession, Wright was able to expand by acquiring two stores in Albany from a less successful operator. And he continued to parlay An open programming interface (API) to a service provider's network (the network operator), developed by the Parlay Group (www.parlay.org). By enabling the customer's application to talk directly to the network, it allows the end user to have greater access to network information as well acquisitions through purchase and trade into a small chain of stores. When Rick Wright joined in 1990, his father's company operated one Thriftway and four Food Warehouse stores. One of the younger Wright's first suggestions was a name change, to Price Chopper, because Food Warehouse was a name shared by stores throughout the state. There's an element of irony to the son's career choice. "When I first entered college I swore swore v. Past tense of swear. swore Verb the past tense of swear swore, sworn swear that I would never be in the food industry, that I would never sell groceries," Rick Wright said. But the economy "wasn't superb" when he got out of college in 1984, he said, and it was employers in the food industry who could best appreciate his combination of grocery background and business/marketing degree. He went to work for West Coast Grocery Co., which was soon purchased by Supervalu, one of the largest grocery wholesalers. After five years in wholesaling as a supplier to Albertson's, he moved to a job as head of merchandising for Supervalu's Cub Foods Cub Foods is a grocery store chain with eighty-four stores in Minnesota, Iowa, Northern and Central Illinois, Wisconsin, and the Miami Valley in Ohio. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Supervalu. division (now WinCo), which was opening its first stores in Portland. Young Wright didn't immediately jump at the chance to enter the family business. "You know, when the offer to come back came, I think I turned him down a number of times or just said, 'I'm not ready yet,' ' the son said. "And then, obviously, he got me on a right day one day when I was having a bad day at work or something, because I decided to come back." The Wrights operated their stores under the Price Chopper name from 1990 until 1997 when they won a lengthy bidding war to acquire a store at 29th and Willamette in Eugene. At that store, they learned from their customers that organic and natural products were in great demand. "We were mildly successful at that time with the store," Rick Wright said. "But the great thing about being in south Eugene is that you have lots of people who are willing to tell you what they want. And we listened. And, basically what they told us was that they wanted to have a lot of natural foods. They wanted organic produce. They wanted hormone-free beef and they wanted hormone-free dairy products dairy products dairy npl → produits laitier dairy products dairy npl → Milchprodukte pl, Molkereiprodukte pl . And they also wanted to have Oreo cookies and Wheat Thins Wheat Thins are a popular baked snack cracker found in North America and distributed by Nabisco, a subsidiary of Kraft Foods Global Inc.. The product's slogan 'Great Taste...Big Crunch' was developed by Brian Eaton. and some of the conventional items that they also purchased." Heeding demographics The attributes of people in a particular geographic area. Used for marketing purposes, population, ethnic origins, religion, spoken language, income and age range are examples of demographic data. At the Wrights' stores it's not a pleasantry pleas·ant·ry n. pl. pleas·ant·ries 1. A humorous remark or act; a jest. 2. A polite social utterance; a civility: exchanged pleasantries before getting down to business. but market research when a checker check·er n. 1. a. One, such as an inspector or examiner, that checks. b. One that receives items for temporary safekeeping or for shipment: a baggage checker. 2. asks, "Did you find everything you wanted?" If a customer didn't find a product, it gets reported to the management. "About three months after we opened the (29th and Willamette) store we decided that we're going to do just fine the way it is, but if we really want to do well, we've got a lot of changes to make," Rick Wright said. "We really listened to the customer and started bringing in natural foods. We also hired the buyer for Oasis stores. He was no longer employed by Oasis because Wild Oats had purchased them." The Wrights then decided to install the new products in all of their stores, selling or closing stores where the neighborhood demographics weren't suited to natural and organic foods. They opened a store on Franklin Boulevard in Eugene in October 2000 and another store in Ashland in February 2001. The Price Chopper name became PC Market of Choice to keep the Price Chopper identity. The transition will continue until all the signs say simply Market of Choice. "We don't have any stores under construction or development at this stage, although we still have plans to if we find communities where the demographics are correct for us," Rick Wright said. However, the Delta Oaks store in Eugene is scheduled to be remodeled this year, in part to expand the kitchen area for prepared foods. Creating a new concept for the stores has been the biggest challenge he has faced, Rick Wright said. "And I think, like a lot of plans, the first 80 percent of it came pretty easy and the next 20 percent of completing this whole program has been the most difficult part of it," he said. "For instance, our food services food services Hospital services A 24/7 department in a hospital that provides for the nutritional needs of inpatients–eg, those needing special diets, preparing meals and transporting them to the floor and, through the cafeteria, the hospital staff and departments, our bakeries and service deli's, where we prepare product from scratch. We are in the infancy infancy, stage of human development lasting from birth to approximately two years of age. The hallmarks of infancy are physical growth, motor development, vocal development, and cognitive and social development. of changing those departments to what we want them to be." About five years ago, chain grocery stores got involved in what they call "home meal replacement," he said. This trend was based on the notion that busy consumers would prefer to pick up a pre-cooked dinner at the market instead of having to go home and cook from scratch. But, with some exceptions, the replacement meals the grocery industry offered weren't freshly prepared but were frozen foods that were defrosted and displayed in the deli department, he said. "Home meal replacement really failed pretty miserably except for a few retailers that really decided they wanted to make it something real," Rick Wright said. "And that's what we're in the development stages of - creating a home meal replacement program that's real, where we actually make product that could be as good as if you went to a restaurant." WRIGHT'S FOODLINER INC. DBA MARKET OF CHOICE Address: Corporate office at 25 W. 25th Ave., Eugene. Three markets in Eugene, two in Grants Pass, one in Cottage Grove and one in Ashland. Owners: Richard and Marsha Wright, Richard Wright, Richard, 1908–60, American author. An African American born on a Mississippi plantation, Wright struggled through a difficult childhood and worked to educate himself. Wright Jr. and Debbie Wright Debbie Wright is an American singer. Wright sang on early P-Funk material in the late 1960s early 1970s with Parlet member, Mallia Franklin. Wright and Jeanette Washington became first female members of P-Funk in 1975. Wright, Franklin & Washington became Parlet in 1978. , Lawrence and Laurie Brody. Years in business: 24 (since 1978) Number of employees: 525 Family members involved in the business: Richard "Dick" Wright, president; Richard "Rick" Wright Jr., the older of Wright's two sons, executive vice president; Lawrence Brody, a son-in-law married to Wright's daughter Laurie, chief financial officer; Marcus Whittaker, a son-in-law married to Wright's daughter Suzyn, personnel director; Suzyn Whittaker, part-time administrative assistant. (Craig Wright Craig Wright can refer to the following:
Computer networking is the engineering discipline concerned with communication between computer systems or devices. consultant.) - The Register-Guard CAPTION(S): THOMAS BOYD Thomas Boyd may be
|
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion