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Stew Leonard on Grocery Store Space (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to taking Start with Kathleen Hayes and Pim
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  Speaker 1: Box on Bloomberg Radio. Do you know any retail operation,
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  Speaker 1: Kathleen that happens to be in the Guinness Book of
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  Speaker 1: World Records? Well, I do you do? Yes. Stu Leonards
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  Speaker 1: is in the Guinness Book of World Records that when
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  Speaker 1: I believe it was, and it had to do with
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  Speaker 1: having the greatest sales per unit area of any single
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  Speaker 1: food store in the United States. And here to tell
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  Speaker 1: us more is Stu Leonard. He is the chief executive
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  Speaker 1: of Stu Leonards Fresh Food Store and you can of
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  Speaker 1: course follow him on Twitter at Stu Leonard. Stu Leonard,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for being here. I love it. It's great being
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  Speaker 1: with you guys. Tell us about stulet give people the
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  Speaker 1: sort of thirty second second. Grandfather started delivering milk in twenties.
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  Speaker 1: My father started retail and built a dairy plant where
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  Speaker 1: you could watch the milk being bottle. We got it
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  Speaker 1: all from local farms, and then we added fish meat produce.
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  Speaker 1: Now we have a big farmer's mark, get it. We
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  Speaker 1: have five stores around the New York area. UM people
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  Speaker 1: work for us, UM and UM and we just have fun.
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  Speaker 1: We sell all fresh, local good food in the store.
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  Speaker 1: Tell us how that fun part evolved. You know, as
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  Speaker 1: Pim has noted. New York Times called you the disney
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  Speaker 1: Landed dairy stores. Are colleague Courtney Donahoe, who loves your
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  Speaker 1: store hus for years. It looks like a Kia. It's
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  Speaker 1: just so cool. Describe for our listeners who have never
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  Speaker 1: been to Stud Leonards what that element is, where it
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  Speaker 1: came from, what we did. We just had this thing.
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  Speaker 1: We want to make it fun for families to come
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  Speaker 1: and shop, and it's sort of InVogue today. But my dad,
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  Speaker 1: when we were growing up, we used to go to
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  Speaker 1: Disney in Las Vegas all the time, so it's all
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  Speaker 1: theatrics and shows. So we tried to bring a little
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  Speaker 1: bit back to Stud Leonards. So the New York Times
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  Speaker 1: called is a disney Landed dairy stores once. So we
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  Speaker 1: try to make it fun. There's animation, and you smile
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  Speaker 1: and dance when you walk around the store. How can
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  Speaker 1: you're not smile and dance when you've got a cow,
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  Speaker 1: uh not a real well, sometimes a cow walking around
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  Speaker 1: the aisles. It walks around and you can push a
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  Speaker 1: button here move tell us about the business because I
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  Speaker 1: know what you're doing maybe about half a billion here
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  Speaker 1: in sales, and you carry many fewer items than the
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  Speaker 1: competing grocery store chains. Why is that. Well, one of
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  Speaker 1: the things we we we just sell the best sellers
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  Speaker 1: and we're mainly fresh. So if you take the middle
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  Speaker 1: out of a grocery store and just look at the
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  Speaker 1: perimeter walls of the meat, fish produced cheese deli, that's
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  Speaker 1: our main items at stew Letters. So we have two
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  Speaker 1: thousand items compared to your normal supermarket that might have fifty.
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  Speaker 1: That's quite a quite a big difference. I want to
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  Speaker 1: ask you now about something that is maybe more serious side.
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  Speaker 1: But I'm sure when we talked about smiles on people's faces,
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  Speaker 1: it has to do with putting smiles on your workers faces.
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  Speaker 1: And that how has to do with your your health program.
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  Speaker 1: You've gotten a head start, you've got in store health screenings,
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  Speaker 1: you've got all kinds of things, and you've been able
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  Speaker 1: to show excellent results results. Tell us about that. Well,
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  Speaker 1: one of the things we did was we we um
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  Speaker 1: we went and we were one of the top one
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  Speaker 1: companies you know, Fortune magazine rated in in America to
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  Speaker 1: work at. So we did that for ten years in
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  Speaker 1: a row. Then we decided we want to be one
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  Speaker 1: of the best healthcare companies. So we put a big
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  Speaker 1: initiative on healthcare. And so what we did everybody free physicals.
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  Speaker 1: We give everybody thousand dollars to go get a physical
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  Speaker 1: because what we want to do is have you get
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  Speaker 1: a dashboard to find out what your blood pressure is,
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  Speaker 1: your sugar level for diabetes, do you need lipatore, any drugs.
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  Speaker 1: So what we've done is be able to get our people.
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  Speaker 1: We had twenty two percent of our population that went
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  Speaker 1: to the doctors. Now it's almost ninety so almost everybody
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  Speaker 1: he's getting a physical now every year. And then we
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  Speaker 1: add some of the programs you mentioned, which is, you know,
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  Speaker 1: ways to reduce stress, ways to control your weight, stop smoking,
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  Speaker 1: um and and all sorts of programs to try to
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  Speaker 1: help you get healthier. Well, I noticed that you're wearing
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  Speaker 1: a fitbit. Yeah, we've got a fit Bit challenge in
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  Speaker 1: the stores, that's right. Yeah, we we gave out three
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  Speaker 1: hundred of these to everybody at at St. Leonards, and
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  Speaker 1: you know, we have it where they can come into
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  Speaker 1: program and get into contest. And today I gotta get
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  Speaker 1: my ten thousand steps in and I'm way behind because
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  Speaker 1: I'm sitting here. You can run up and down some
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  Speaker 1: of those stairs here at Blue they've got many floors topid.
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  Speaker 1: What kind of healthcare plan do you offer to your employees.
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  Speaker 1: I think there's you know, as the as big companies
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  Speaker 1: are dropping out of the the Obamacare exchanges is people
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  Speaker 1: have their kids growing up and maybe they got to
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  Speaker 1: buy insurance. People are beating to see it's it's not
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  Speaker 1: such a great deal necessarily for everybody was cracked up
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  Speaker 1: to be. One of the things we've been able to
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  Speaker 1: do over the last you know, five six years, is
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  Speaker 1: we have not had an increase in our healthcare costs.
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  Speaker 1: We've been able to control it. And one of the
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  Speaker 1: things we're doing is we're creating these value centers at
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  Speaker 1: the store. So if you need as an example, says,
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  Speaker 1: I had to get my rotator cuff shoulder surgery. I
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  Speaker 1: went around was twelve thousand dollars to get it at
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  Speaker 1: the local hospital, and I found I could go to
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  Speaker 1: one of these you know, physician clinics and it was
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  Speaker 1: only gonna be Now we're able to offer if one
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  Speaker 1: of our team members it stews gets will give them
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  Speaker 1: like to bonus for doing that, So we're incentivizing everybody
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  Speaker 1: to shop healthcare. Next time you go to the doctor,
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  Speaker 1: ask them how much that procedure costs, and of the
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  Speaker 1: time they have no idea. It's like we're buying food.
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  Speaker 1: You know how much a Porterhouse steak costs or lobster
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  Speaker 1: right now, but you won't know how much healthcare costs.
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  Speaker 1: So we're educating our population of people at Stews on
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  Speaker 1: costs to get these procedures done, and it's helped us
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  Speaker 1: lower our costs. Last point to you, because we gotta run.
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  Speaker 1: You're still doing the free ice cream. As a matter
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  Speaker 1: of fact, I gave you my business card. Look on
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  Speaker 1: the back of it. You'll see you can come into Stews. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: you get a free ice cream cone. Pim, you spend
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  Speaker 1: a hundred dollars to get a free cone. Favor you'll
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  Speaker 1: get not only any flavor, will bring you back and
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  Speaker 1: let you make your own con St. Leonard and he's
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  Speaker 1: going to wear the cow outfit too. He's the CEO
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  Speaker 1: of Stu Leonards, a fresh food store. We thank him
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  Speaker 1: so much for joining us in studio today. I'm Kathleen
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  Speaker 1: Hayes along with Pim Fox taking stock this is Boomberg,