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RETAIL SUSTAINABILITY AWARD - PRICE CHOPPER’S MARKET 32
48 / MAY 2016 / PRODUCE BUSINESS
shrinking,” says Pat Iannotti, director of shrink administration and 30-year veteran with the company.
“Obviously our shrink control is in two components: fresh and center store. Just our fresh exposure is about $85 million, and our center store is about $18 million. You add them together, and we have more than $100 million of exposure in shrink. As an organization, we recognize we need to pay attention to shrink,” he says, noting, his position didn’t exist two years ago. “We really didn’t focus on shrink, we focused on margin. We said, ‘Well, if you hit your budgeted margin, then your shrink is probably in line, and you’re doing a good job.’
“I think about the creation of the shrink position from a lean management
perspective; it is one thing to go chasing incremental sales — and every organiza- tion does go and chase them — but if there is a hole in the bottom of the bucket, you are basically pouring your incremental sales into a capital investment structure that is leaking out the bottom through an uncontrolled shrink,” says Iannotti. “The best way to address that issue is to plug the hole in the bottom of the bucket, so your incremental sales actually are addi- tive as opposed to something that just sort of normalizes things to balance out the losses.”
From a fresh produce perspective, minimizing shrink is challenging and complex, explains Iannotti. In transitioning to Market 32, parameters change — from the way it is structured and merchandised


































































































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