“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddle Masses” – The Supermarket Industry and it’s History With Immigrants

I do not know if it was all of the noise from the Talking Heads, no not the musical group from the late 70’s and early 80’s, what I am referring to is the shrill from the mouths of today’s news media personalities and the fact that the November 2010 elections have just finished up but I do feel a bit nostalgic if not at least very patriotic today therefore the reason for this particular post. While this years election was basically built up into a referendum on the public’s perception of the current Presidents performance in office for the last two years the national debate over Immigration Reform became lost in the swirls of accusations and other forms of character assassinations except for the occasional rant from a Tea-publican complaining that real Americans speak English.

I for one am so very proud to be working in such a progressively minded industry as the Retail Supermarket Industry.  It was my pride in the Supermarket Industry along with the backdrop of the end of the 2010 election cycle that I was thinking about how my industry has given so much support to so many immigrant groups over the years. Yes I was sitting here envisioning all of our new immigrants arriving in this great land of ours and peering through the free binoculars that the international air carriers have provide them then suddenly each of the passengers see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. With the tears rolling down my cheeks I see that from every window on the plane hundreds of sets of eyes zooming in on that famous plaque at the base of Lady Liberty. I wipe the tears off of my face knowing that these future citizens, or hopefully at least Green Card holders, are reading the lines etched at its base that the poet Emma Lazarus wrote many years ago –  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” with the caveat at the end of the plaque that added and owning your own supermarket.

The poet Emma Lazarus was the daughter of a successful family who resided in New York and was of Portuguese-Jewish decent. Her families roots in America go back to before the American Revolution. I kind of imagine that her father and grandfather were grocery store owners operating their business out of the first floor of their homes although they probably were not retailers at all.

Depending on the particular area of the United States that an immigrant to America of the late 19th or early 20th century found themselves in the neighborhood food market or general store of the day was the type of business that opened its arms wide for a group of any hard-working people. It did not matter if they were Italian, German or Russian and it certainly did not matter if they were Christian or Jewish for the opportunities abounded for everyone in the food retailing business who possessed a strong work ethic. Some of the most successful family owned U.S. supermarket chains, pre-multinational mega corporation days, can be traced back to some form of immigrant roots of the late 19th or early 20th century.

Back in the day, so to speak, these immigrant operators of the neighborhood food stores spoke to their fellow immigrants in their native tongues and also made sure that they sold the products that their customers wanted to buy. Most of these old world products were certainly a source of comfort for their immigrant customers who found themselves in a new land, with a new language and somewhat strange unfamiliar things to eat.

A number of  these early immigrant food retailers thrived and became extremely successful. There were some who built up their corner neighborhood store into 30 to 100+ regional supermarket chains by the 1960’s and 1970’s. During the years that these local neighborhood stores became city and state-wide supermarket chains the immigrant founders had become totally assimilated into their adopted country and as such found themselves speaking English like natives and marketing to their mainstream customers of the area that they serve. Today we might see those same early development patterns found in the first generation of immigrant supermarket operators and what is happening today with America’s latest wave of immigrants retailers.

Then in the 1980’s the consolidation bug had bitten the supermarket industry and we saw operators like Safeway, Kroger and even the grand daddy of supermarkets A&P buying up those older immigrant founded regional supermarket chains. Later that same decade with blood still in the water, along with the advent of a true global economy, European retailers like Koninklijke Ahold N.V. (“Ahold”) and Delhaize Group (Euronext Brussels:DELB) (NYSE:DEG) came to the colonies and began to snap up retailers on the East Coast. One after one most of these immigrant founded family supermarket chains began to disappear from the retail landscape.

There was one other event in the 1980’s to hit the U.S. Supermarket Industry like a tsunami rolling over the beach in Thailand and of course this was the massive market share gathering thrust of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s entry into the food retailing business was going to provide opportunities for our latest wave of immigrant grocers something that even the crowd from Bentonville has still not grasped even today. The mega multinationals mentioned in the preceding paragraph trembled with fear as Wal-Mart’s foray into the food retailing business gathered steam however the latest group of immigrants seemed to not give it a second thought. They would find opportunities from the ashes of the closed stores run by earlier immigrant families that Wal-Mart helped close.

The differences between the multi-nationals buying up regional family stores and the entry of Wal-Mart into the food retailing business was the size of their Super Center format stores. The large tracks of land necessary for a Super Center impacted local real estate prices by driving them up yet at the same time it increased the availability of closed smaller store locations after the Borg, if you do not know what is meant by this reference then just keep reading, swept through a community. At this same time Wal-Mart was building 100,000+ square foot sized stores which required huge swaths of land in which to build. Within their “Super Centers” Wal-Mart was dedicating a fair amount of floor space to selling food and non-food products commonly found in the supermarket of day. Slowly this retailing behemoth was choking off their competition in every aspect of food retailing from product cost, labor to the price real estate where a competing store might want to locate.

Well as Wal-Mart and other warehouse format stores got more and more into selling food products a number of smaller food retailers were put out of business. Chain stores saw a loss of market share as well during these turbulent times. In most cases chain stores worked to cut labor costs, reduce services as well as better control inventory costs so as to maintain their profit levels. Some of the chain’s stores however were no longer profitable and decisions were made to close these under performing locations. Smaller locally owned supermarkets and grocery stores that had served their communities for one or two generations began to look hard at their operations and work even harder to stop the hemorrhaging of their profit margins and customer base. More and more of these smaller retail grocery stores began to close their doors as well. It is interesting to note that some of these closed stores were 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant founded businesses. These owners had decided that they could know longer live the American Dream at least as a retail store operator.

It was not just the competition from the mega stores that was contributing to the closing of these smaller family owned retail stores. There were increasing general liability insurance costs, rising health insurance premiums, more government regulations, higher environmental fees, legal fees and growing labor costs that were proportionally higher than their competition. This wave of small business closures had been coming for a long time and the final blow was the competition from the mega stores. Today’s consumer wanted a wide selection of products and always at the lowest price regardless of the size of the store that they shopped in. Let’s not forget that other retailers were eating away at supermarket sales by stocking certain food products along with the variety of non-perishable food products available on the Internet.

Now the retail commercial real estate landscape contained more and more empty store fronts. Most were for lease however Wal-Mart in some cases, along with other larger retailers, would build a new Super Center in another part of a particular town or county and shutter the older one. They would still keep paying the lease on the old location and contractual terms allowed them to do this so as to keep a competitor from moving into the old location. This would contribute to a look of a ghost town in some local communities now that the shoppers were driving a few miles down the road to the new store.

That old saying is that when life gives you lemons then make lemonade is probably the most appropriate way to begin this part of the post. America’s most recent group of immigrants, those that have arrived in the last 25 years or so, seem to know how to make the best of the situation.

Whether they hail from South Asia, the Far East, Latin America or Eastern Europe some of these immigrants have shown that hard work and in some case cultural or language barriers can still go far in America. I might also add that in some metropolitan areas a bit of political correctness on the part of local politicians has also helped these new arrivals succeed in the supermarket business.

While readers can perhaps read in different things to which was written in the previous paragraph the point is that the latest wave of immigrants work hard, tend to stay grounded in business relationships with their fellow immigrants in their own communities or extended families venturing outside of this circle only when they have to. There is a view that local governments seem to bend over backwards to help these new business people get their start and on their feet. What I find ironic is that this type of assistance is what the existing retailers resent so much. A perception of favoritism towards the new immigrant retail supermarket operators is prevalent in a number of communities today.

There are stories in some locals that imply that these new immigrant owned food stores are given breaks by local regulatory agencies who might not seem to enforce the same set of rules that they do at other established food retailers. It has been said that some new immigrant owned food retailers seem to always have managers or employees on duty in the store when local agency staff come around to perform inspections that conveniently do not speak English. To hear some of the municipal inspectors try to tell someone in a store that there is this or that violation with products not being kept under the right storage temperatures and the employee just stare at them with a puzzled look of I do not understand what you are saying. The picture of an agency enforcement representative unable to communicate to the store associate must be priceless especially if the employee really does understand what actually is being said.

You might also have a new immigrant store operator who might say to the refrigeration company representative – what I have to dispose of my old refrigeration coolant because my cooler cases are using EPA outlawed coolant and I need to pay $1,000’s of dollars to a company to do this? Heck no I do not have to because I have a cousin or in-law of mine who does work on the side and said that he can do it for a few hundred dollars. I do not know where he will dispose of the old coolant. Perhaps it will be put in the retailers dumpster or possibly in another retailers dumpster in the same shopping center instead of being disposed of properly. Is my guy going to put the correct EPA coolant that costs so much back in my cooler case? Who knows. What that tile that I want taken up has asbestos in it and I will need to call someone special about it? No I have someone else that can do that job without the need to have a hazardous waste company come in and do it. Of course there are older more established retailers that have probably done the same thing and only worry about it when they get caught.

New immigrant business owners tend to be wary of employing non-fellow immigrant employees possibly just as immigrants did at the turn of the 20th century. There are many other similarities between this generation of immigrant grocers and ones from a hundred years ago.

So have things really changed that much in terms of immigrants owning and operating supermarkets today that did not happen a hundred years ago? Probably not. Are there opportunities for hard-working people with money from their communities or family to own and operate supermarkets? Yes there are. Do the closed store locations left by other retailers offer opportunities to our latest group of immigrants? Yes they do.

A new generation of store owners is living the American Dream here today and is ready to serve the food needs of our most recent wave of immigrants.

God Bless America.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Blackberry’s Are Not in the Produce Department and Can You Wait for Just a Minute I Have to Make a Call

Someone recently said that cell or smart phones are not the reason for a perceived increase in rude and ill-mannered behavior by some people in public. The fact of the matter is that these types of people act selfishly and rudely with or without the use of technology. We do not need to use a cell phone to explain why people today exhibit bad manners in public places because behavioral traits like these operate without the need for an electric charger.

Wander through the aisles of your local Supermarket and you will see, what appears at first, to be people talking with themselves. Then upon closer examination one realizes that these people are actually speaking to someone else on their cell phone through some sort of ear piece device. Cell Phones are a handy way for one’s wife, husband, significant other or elderly parent to get in touch with a shopper to ask them to pick up this or that since they are already at the store. If only this were the case in reality.

Listening to people talk on their cell phones in the supermarket can be an insight into our social norms or possibly a case study of conversations at a mental health clinic. For one particular group of shoppers, sorry young ladies, being at the Grocery Store seems to be the time that they can catch up on the gossip of what their fellow girl friends are doing and in some case doing it with. In the case of the busy 30 something male it is a chance to catch up on voice mails from the office or planning for the next sporting event. Every social group that I have observed talking on the cell phone in the Grocery Store have their own particular subject matter that needs to be talked about as they pickup the sodas, chips and frozen food. Why is this? Sociologists I am sure will have an answer and the statistics to back up a study on this type of behavior. Psychologist will have their perspectives on this subject and most of the rest of us will still go around scratching our heads as to why people feel the need to talk about things so loudly on the cell phone in public.

In the interest of full disclosure I own a cell phone or smart phone as they are referred to today. I have never really felt the need to wander through some public place and carry on a conversation with someone else at the same time. Remember though so far I have only been writing about customers using their cell phones in public at the Grocery Store.

So who says that Supermarket employees should be excluded from exercising a little bit of narcissistic tendencies on the job as well. I know for myself that they do so regularly and see it just about everyday or every time I go into a supermarket.

Let’s briefly go off the current subject matter for a moment so that I can provide some background as to why this socially rude and unacceptable behavior of using a Cell Phone at work in the Supermarket has been allowed to grow roots.

Technology is a wonderful thing in most cases. Technology allows for one to be more informed, in touch and have access to the volumes of the accumulated wealth of man. Years ago in many American business, not just the Retail Food industry, computers perpetuated the reduction in numbers of mid-level management positions in an organization. In older businesses the executives would set policies, then area directors would package them for use by the managers who in turn would supervise those policies implementation and adherence to by the line employees. Whether this was a manufacturing, traditional office or service operation mid-level management were the supervisory Bee’s in the business colony.

Technology, namely computers of all different sizes and capabilities, allowed executives to monitor productivity and the operations of a business at all levels. In the interests of cost savings and organizational profitability it was determined that there was too much mid-level management in place. More managing could be done with less management and more technology. Executives could have their finger on the pulse of an organization all of the time. Anyway this change in the organizational thought process worked its way through every industry in the United States even the humble Supermarket Business.

Depending on the size of a particular Grocery Store the organizational structure use to include a store manager, assistant managers, department heads, office personnel, inventory clerks, front-end supervisors, cashiers and perhaps someone to load your purchases into your car. Well to the owners and executives of the Grocery Stores this was just too many people to have on the payroll. Right Uzzi? After all the owners and executives now had the technology to manage every aspect of the business. They did not need someone else interpreting results for them or even carrying out some policy because they could do this themselves or through others further down the organizational chart. In addition the age of hello e-mail good-by personal visits by a mid-level managers was dawning.

So the Supermarket Industry went through an organizational change at store level. First store managers, through the use of technology, could do more to monitor the different areas of their stores. They did not need 3 or 4 assistant managers to help in the running of the store, now they just needed a couple of assistants. The need for multiple department heads was no longer needed either because technology has proven to the owners that the Dairy Department Manager can also be the Frozen Food Manager. Instead of having a pseudo bookkeeper at the store the computer would keep track of things and flag any exceptions which now the store manager must look into first. Front-end Supervisors became more and more extinct in most stores. Instead an office type person can help the cashiers or attend to the odd customer inquiry now and then. Cashiers can be cashiers or Self Checkout Registers can even eliminate the need for the number of cashiers as well – more on this in another post. The store can now reduce their over all store payroll by two to four percent. Considering that a Grocery Store can have a payroll of 7 – 14 percent of its total retail sales the savings are huge. So fewer eyes and more technology was the answer to a store’s profit and service be damned just ask the Holy Grail of retailing Wal-Mart.

So now we can better understand why in some cases no one is watching the proverbial store anymore – other than the closed circuit cameras that are for the most part not being monitored just recorded, the store is on its own as are the customers.

The other day I was in one of the Uzzi Family company stores and I noticed that a cashier, a young man, seemed to be fidgeting with something or with himself while he was waiting on a customer. Of course my thoughts were that perhaps the customer is really a robber and threatening the young cashier. However upon closer observation I saw that the cashier was still checking out or scanning a customers order it was just that the customer was not really putting the products on the check stand with any particular sense of speed. Heck there was not even a rhythm to this process for this customer was just slow putting things on the checkout belt.

This cashier apparently felt that he could use these snippets of 10 or 15 seconds between the groups of products being dug from the customers cart to carry on a Text Messaging conversation with someone who he knew. How’s about that? This cashier certainly practices some type of extreme time management if you ask me.

In the past I had noticed that even at my own local supermarket younger cashiers almost always seemed to have their cell phone or smart phone within close proximity to where they are working. Occasionally I would hear a ring tone similar to a Lady Gaga hit single or some other current R&B or Hip Hop artist going off in the employees pants pockets or purses that were placed under the counter of their workstation. I also noticed that if an opportunity presented itself either after the customer had finished checking out or before the next customer’s order was completely placed on the Checkout Belt that the cashier would reach for the phone and see either who it was that called earlier or what the Text Message said that just came in. There have been times where I have seen the cashier either respond to the Text Message or make a quick phone call before checking out the next customer.

I must be sensitive to this type of behavior now because I see it more and more in the retail stores that I am in. The points that I would like to make here with this post is that rude behavior and poor manners do not need technology to bring it out into the open. If people acting like this today were allowed to do these things and act like this growing up it certainly was something that the parents failed to communicate to their children as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable forms of behavior. It is not up to the schools or businesses to be surrogate parents and teach their employees not to be rude however the businesses should always provide good examples of proper behavior. However it is up to the schools and the businesses to let their students or employees know what the rules are along with the consequences of not following them. Hello kids do you want fries with that order.

The second point that I would like to make here is that with the lack of supervision in more and more Supermarkets today it is not surprising to see that this type of rude behavior and employee malaise can occur. Store owners and management have an obligation to their customers to provide food products in a clean and sanitary environment with efficient and effect service at a reasonable price. No more and no less. Without proper supervision and periodic associate reviews that include addressing behavioral traits these forms of rude behavior will continue to find fertile ground in the supermarket.

As an aside it is not just the cashiers who are using their cell phones whenever they want to at work it is also the cart person, the meat cutter and the person behind the deli counter. At times I have heard more colorful language emanating from behind the counter from my location on the sales floor than I have heard in some bars.

Quickly to give Uzzi some credit he has a very strict policy on the use of cell phones in a store while an employee is on the company’s time or as he says his time. This policy requires that the employee not use their cell phone when they are working or on the sales floor only when they are on break or leaving for the day. Of course you always see Uzzi when he is in any of the stores with his cell phone at his ear but I guess that he is using it for company business – yea right.

It was only 10 years ago or so that if someone mentioned or used the word Blackberry in a Supermarket one would think of a particular type of fruit berry in the Produce Department. Today one’s first thought is of that famous type of smart phone. Oops I have to run now because I just got a Tweet from Paris Hilton and I want to read it right away.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories