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“A company with heart is probably the biggest form of praise that you can give us. It is our skin in the game. We have the commit- ment and pride and ownership all tied into one.”
— Maria Brous
hurricane, we’re up and running as soon as possible. That’s not just keeping the supply routes running, but hurricane debris removal and everything else that goes into opening up after a big storm.
Maria Brous: All the things that we have done to become more energy-efficient have also helped us in the recovery processes. They’re all linked together.
Ken Whitacre: Has the economy slowed any of this down? Has it delayed how fast you’re able to create a new store?
Maria Brous: The time doesn’t change for us. One of the most important things, which Fortune magazine noted for us, too, is in a tough economic time we are a debt-free com- pany. We are making acquisitions. We contin- ue to be strong. We are still purchasing.
Do consumer trends change? Absolutely. Will we delay different projects because our focus is on our retail stores and servicing cus- tomers? Do we re-prioritize? Yes. To say no would be inaccurate. The economy plays a sig- nificant part, but the commitment level does not change.
Whatever the project is that we’re working on, whatever becomes a priority today, we may need to wait on trying to work with a specific vendor or on a pilot that they were doing because it just doesn’t make good busi- ness sense now. However, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop talks about how to find the next great thing in composting, or how to get back to that organic food recovery plan. We keep an open door. We’re always seeking information that allows us to do different things being debt-free.
We can take more risk in a tough economy, even though we’ve always been very cautious. We are a very lean company. There’s not a whole lot of fluff and excess. Being stockhold- ers in our company, we’ve always tried to eliminate waste — that’s part of our mission statement — from inside out. So while the economy has changed for America, how we do business hasn’t.
Mira Slott: When the gas prices kept increasing to over $4.00 a gallon, there was big talk about sustainability and then, there was concern that maybe when the prices of gas started dropping, all of a sudden this big push in sustainability was going to be pushed under the rug again.
Maria Brous: What kills me is that if there’s been flooding or droughts, we’ll get calls asking, “How is this going to affect the price of your produce today or tomorrow?” I’m trying to explain you won’t see the impact today or tomorrow. It’s a longer-term affect. Come talk to me in about three months.
Rising gas prices is a perfect example. Fuel is only one part of the equation, during the prolonged period of time when problems accumulate. When customers saw the gas prices go down again, they assumed that the cost of goods would go down, but there’s still the cost of the raw materials and everything else that’s factored in.
The other part to that is the grocery busi- ness is a penny-for-profit business. There is not a whole lot of room for money to be made. Consumers see prices increasing, and they automatically expect the grocer is profit- ing on that, when the actuality is we have to work hard for every dollar that you’re spend- ing. We’re earning pennies on that dollar. We have to sell a lot of groceries in order to make it work and our commitment has to be there.
Ken Whitacre: Do you see your stores as three separate entities — being GreenWise, your newer Publix formats that you open, and your older Publix stores — and treat them dif- ferently in any way?
Michael Hewitt: No, we really don’t. It’s all the same to us. We have a few different for- mats because we’re always trying to service the customer better. But when it comes to energy efficiency or efficiencies realized during the construction process, insulation, the myriad things we do to make our retail operations more sustainable; that mantra is the same.
Ken Whitacre: Let me throw in solar
power, for example. Does solar power have a different priority for a GreenWise store as it does for the other stores?
Michael Hewitt: No, it’s not a different priority. It’s a priority for the company. Solar will be increasing in its importance going for- ward. What we’re looking for with solar is to figure out how best to integrate that technolo- gy into what we do, and our GreenWise Mar- kets provided us with an opportunity — going back to the laboratory comment earlier — to install some solar on a retail operation, and look at how that works, how efficient it is, what the cost is, what the payback is and what the benefits are. We’ve also installed solar at our corporate office, so it’s not just at retail. We have photovoltaic generating capacity.
Maria Brous: We have another traditional Publix that has solar installed, too.
Michael Hewitt: That’s right. We have a total of four solar installations, each one simi- lar, but there are differences with each. We’re looking for how to make that work. Maybe
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