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RETAIL SUSTAINABILITY AWARD - PRICE CHOPPER’S MARKET 32
for all departments, adding nine positions in the loss prevention department and zone specialists that conduct audits and help to execute strategies. “We had a shrink budget this year for the rst time. We set out to reduce our shrink between 7 and 8 percent, and we’re on target to hit that,” he says.
As for shrink, don’t assume that direct local delivery would have a better shrink than something shipped from further away, explains Iannotti.
Using corn as an example, “it is picked, refrigerated, and put on refrigerated trucks. The local farmer may bring it to you on the back of his pickup truck after he stopped at 10 other spots, with product out of refrigeration for three, four, or ve hours,” he says. “Our food hubs have stringent food safety protocols. The biggest barrier to bring in local produce through direct store delivery was there was no real normalized food safety protocol,” says Iannotti.
Reed elaborates: “The narrative on local is that there is no food safety stan- dardization. We require a minimum of GAP certi cation from our growers,” he says. “We encourage the larger growers to get SQF-certi ed [FMI’s Safe Quality Food program]. They must be GAP-certi- ed, but we really want SQF, and we won’t entertain any sort of contractual obliga- tions for our hubs unless they have it and all other infrastructure that is necessary for us to bring a truck and load product.
“Quality is certainly a top priority of mine,” says Reed. “If part of what we are talking about is sustainability, the amount of food wasted across the supply chain — just based on the longevity of the product — is de nitely something I think improves through our hub system. It is about standardization of the process, and that is what this infrastructure allows for. In doing that, you are eliminating all of the variables that could conceivably compromise the products.” pb
SUSTAINABILITY ON THE ROAD AND BACK AGAIN
Reinventing the chain’s identity is need to move toward more cradle-to-cradle,
sustainable, closed loop system-oriented packaging designs and materials,” says Joe Berman, manager of corporate social responsibility.
“What every food retailer is seeing in the market is this sort of low-level percola- tion of movement toward legislation around plastic bag bans, for both environmental and commercial reasons,” he says. “The stores have a robust program teaching our customers they have an outlet to partici- pate in sustainable practices that are not a ton of work for them,” says Berman. “Ultimately, you can’t legislate behavior. That being said, we are starting to see a shift in mentality, which also connects with our Market 32 concept.”
Shaun Gonzolez, vice president of advertising, is another company legacy employee with a 27-year tenure and is also part of the team on the ground oor of the Market 32 concept. “Watching it come to life in front of our eyes; we have come a long way in a fairly short period of time, and now we need to just accelerate this transformation,” he says.
“This new direction actually represents some evolutionary and revolutionary steps forward in sustainability and corporate social responsibility, tying into the reality of how the food industry is dramatically changing for a whole list of reasons,” says Berman. “What’s remarkable about this journey for the company is it really has in some way fundamentally touched every aspect of the business.
“The paradigm is shifting and there’s an intrinsic process of self-discovery we’re going through as an organization, which is really exciting,” says Berman. pb
personi ed in a uniform, recog-
nizable brand imagery and a cohe- sive, contemporary aesthetic, explains Berman. “‘The Farm Just got Closer’ campaign is intrinsically Market 32,” says David Schmitz, director of transporta- tion. Trailers carry award-winning banner graphics starring the different produce items on their routes. The message opti- mizes the fresh, local, and environmen- tally friendly sustainability platform, according to Schmitz.
That platform intersects with the chain’s main warehouse/distribution center, explains Schmitz. The chain is committed to cradle-to-cradle reclamation, recycling, and repurposing programs. This macro- level material management for the food industry incorporates many produce-re- lated elements — ranging from corrugated items, to the thin lms and stretch wrap packaging, to plastic produce bags, oral buckets, and wooden watermelon bins.
“We are kind of unusual in that we have a centralized facility to handle resource recovery, so we’re not exclusively depen- dent on the waste community to manage the waste load,” says Schmitz. “We have a way of connecting with the recyclable materials waste ow, and that puts us in a better position to control how those materials are remobilized into the market.”
Market development for post-consumer recycled content material has been very much at the core of our resource recovery efforts since the beginning of the 1990s, says Berman, noting the chain’s pioneering efforts in that regard.
“There is de nitely an awareness at the industry level that packaging is going to
50 / MAY 2016 / PRODUCE BUSINESS