2024 EIA SW

Introducing a salute to ‘backbone of our industry’

On the following pages, Shelby Publishing is proud to present its second annual Exceptional Independents Awards. Nominations were open to independent retailers, wholesalers, technology and other service providers.

“Independents are the backbone of our industry, and this awards program is an opportunity to recognize them for their contributions,” said Stephanie Reid, Shelby president and COO.

“Independents are a vital part of their communities and lead the way in caring for their customers. Our Exceptional Independents Awards shine a light on these businesses that continue to help feed our communities.”

Coverage of the award winners will appear by region in the March 2024 editions of The Shelby Report of the Midwest, The Shelby Report of the Southeast, The Shelby Report of the Southwest, The Shelby Report of the West and The Griffin Report of the Northeast. Awards winners also will be featured on theshelbyreport.com.

Brookshire Brothers

For 100 years, Brookshire Brothers has provided for the needs of customers and the communities it serves. What started with a small general store in downtown Lufkin, Texas, and the big dreams of two brothers has led to hundreds of grocery stores, fuel stations, pharmacies, tobacco shops, convenience stores and coffee shops spanning from the Texas Hill Country to western Louisiana.

The company now operates under seven retail brands – Brookshire Brothers, Brookshire Brothers Express, David’s Supermarkets, David’s

Brookshire Grocery Co.

BGC proudly celebrated 95 years of service and made strides in strengthening its business, employee-partners and communities.

Two newly constructed stores opened in Louisiana, and three new stores were acquired in Texas. The company announced plans for a new FRESH by Brookshire’s store and a new Brookshire’s store in East Texas. Construction is also under way for a Super 1 Foods in Louisiana and a Reasor’s in Oklahoma. BGC has continued to remodel stores, with 49 stores updated in the past two years.

Express, Pecan Foods, Brookshire Brothers Pharmacy and Tobacco Barn.

It doesn’t take a one-size-fits-all approach – each store caters to the unique needs of the community it serves. But there is certainly a common goal. At Brookshire Brothers, and in each of its retail brands, the mission is to be good people who sell good food and do good deeds. So that’s what the company does – deliver exceptional customer service, provide the freshest food and volunteer time and efforts to helping those in its communities, just like it’s been doing for the past century.

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A major milestone was the sale of its pharmacies in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas to Walgreens, which aims to provide customers with expanded offerings and allows BGC to focus on the grocery business. BGC also partnered with Starbucks to open two in-store coffee shops.

BGC has had a strong focus on advancing technology with the rollout of self-checkouts, a new workforce management system and new online platforms for curbside, along with several other significant investments in security and infrastructure.

BGC has further developed and advanced its workplace by deploying programs aimed at teaching leaders additional skills needed for operations and team building. BGC also further invested in training programs such as meatcutter and cake decorator programs. BGC hosted a conference with close to 500 leaders to share the strategic plan and provide further training.

BGC supported employees’ education with its own scholarship program. With a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, BGC has a DE&I Council that implements programs that support and celebrate diversity. BGC has been recognized for its diversity efforts by Newsweek and Forbes. The company has also been certified as a Great Place to Work every year since 2020.

In 2023, BGC’s charity program donated more than $800,000 to support education, hunger relief, first responders and family well-being. In addition, BGC’s holiday food drives raised over $450,000. BGC and Hormel Foods Corp. also donated $100,000 worth of hams to dozens of food banks.

BGC hosted two annual charitable races, which raised $230,000 for local nonprofits. BGC also partnered with Habitat for Humanity to sponsor the construction of a home in Troup, Texas. The two BGC Big Grocery Carts were involved in more than 140 events.

Following storms in June that caused 45 of its stores to lose power, BGC donated free ice to hundreds people, and its food trailer served more than 2,500 meals to people in those areas.

Central Market

Central Market, a division of H-E-B, has contributed 5 percent of pre-tax earnings to public and charitable programs since the 1930s. It served more than 27 communities in Texas in its “Feast of Sharing.”

It also offers support through the community partnership program to have a direct impact on surrounding communities.

Central Market is truly a foodie haven. With all of its employees so overly educated in everything food, it is hard not to find a special ingredient or recipe to cook that they have personally created or tried.

The best and only supermarket to shop at in Texas is Central Market. Unbeatable value, amazing customer service, community focused and always in stock.

Clark’s Market

Tom Clark sold and mortgaged everything he had to move to Aspen, Colorado, taking a chance on a piece of land on Mill Street. He opened this first store in 1978 after his honeymoon to Aspen, which he fell in love with and believed needed a good grocery store.

With his industry experience working for Safeway and with his father marketing for many national brands at Rocky Mountain Marketing Services in Denver, Clark’s interest in the industry grew.

He owns six locations today, five in Colorado and one in Arizona. Each store has its own personality. They are conventional stores with competitive pricing for customers to stretch their dollars, and also have gourmet, natural and organic products.

Cox Farms Market

Cameron Cox and his team at Cox Farms Market work tirelessly to serve their community in Dallas and ensure their shoppers are getting the best deals around. They are always excited to try new ideas that could benefit their shoppers and keep them happy.

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Crest Foods

Crest Foods is a family owned and operated business chain of grocery stores in Oklahoma, with the corporate office in Edmond. It is the premier independent grocer in the OKC metro area. Founded by Nick Harroz in 1964, Crest is known for its “Rock Bottom Prices.” When other independents avoided “dead net pricing” to consumers, Crest embraced the concept and its customer loyalty numbers soared.

Under the leadership of Nick’s son, Bruce, the chain has grown to 10 stores. Crest buys a large of amount of product direct from manufacturers, but its source of supply is Associated Wholesale Grocers.

Each store location includes a large boulder with the tag line – “Home of ROCK bottom prices!” When other independents were reluctant to stack it high and sell it cheap, Crest perfected the concept. Its new stores are large (50,000 square feet), have wide aisles and offer perimeter departments (seafoods, deli, bakery, meat market) that are second to none. Crest is a perfect example of an exceptional independent food retailer.

Firelake Discount Foods

Doc’s Food Stores

The Brown family has been running Doc’s Country Mart in Bixby – and many other stores in communities across Oklahoma – since 1946. Founded by Roy “Doc” and Betty Brown, the company was named Retailer of the Month by Made in Oklahoma in early 2021.

Jim Brown, owner, was inducted into The Shelby Report’s Food Industry Hall of Fame in 2023. His son, Courtney, serves as CEO of the company.

Doc’s has reasonable prices and excellent staff service. It offers a great selection of wines and variety of brands in the grocery department. The Country Mart Rewards program has been a hit with customers.

Over the years at NGA, the company has received consistent awards for creative merchandising and other aspects of its stores.

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FireLake Foods, headquartered in Shawnee, Oklahoma, is the largest grocery store in the U.S. that is owned by a Native American tribe. Citizen Potawatomi Nation opened the 84,000-squarefoot store in 2001 on tribal land in Shawnee.

The tribe now owns three grocery stores, two convenience stores and four smoke shops.

CPN also owns casinos, banks, a golf course, ball fields, bowling alley and RV festival grounds where it hosts an annual large hot air balloon festival in August.

The grocery stores – the other two are in McLoud and Tecumseh – are open to the general public. The McLoud store, at 35,000 square feet, opened in 2016, and the Tecumseh store is the smallest at 11,000 square feet. Both locations are operated as FireLake Express stores.

Harps Food Stores

When local newspapers ceased printing and distributing grocery ad flyers to the Harps Food Stores community, customers could no longer find the grocer’s valuable ads in the newspaper. Plus, with heightened competition from supercenters, Harps needed to find a way to stay relevant in the grocery market.

That’s why the grocer launched the Harps Rewards App to address customer needs, increase loyalty and deliver a satisfying shopping experience. But David Ganoung and the Harps marketing team knew the only way to compete was to offer a level of personalization that makes a shopper feel like more than just a number.

Because Harps lacked a loyalty program, it also lacked the data needed to offer shoppers the digital experience they desired. After meticulous research, Ganoung’s team turned to Birdzi’s dynamic customer intelligence platform to build an innovative loyalty program. Harps utilized Birdzi’s retail and technical expertise to create a roadmap that put newly acquired data to work.

As a retailer, Harps has a reputation for assessing customer needs and delivering a satisfying shopping

experience, and it was vital that this program live up to that reputation. After a six-month development period, the Harps Rewards App launched, featuring Harps branding, personalized ad flyers, shoppable recipes and digital coupons.

Harps advertised the app across all touchpoints, utilized in-store personnel, hosted competitions among store groups and offered incentives for users to download the app. Over 10,000 early adopters downloaded the Harps Rewards App, producing immediate results and skyrocketing digital customer engagement to over 68 percent of Harps Rewards members.

With highly engaged shoppers, the time was right for Harps to launch Birdzi’s personalization solution which uses the entire store catalog to create individual offers for each shopper. These campaigns have seen redemption rates at nearly 10 times other redemption rates, and redeemers spent 38 percent more during the promotion

Healthy Edge Retail Group

The Healthy Edge Retail Group is comprised of three banners of natural product stores – Akin’s Natural Foods (five, located in Oklahoma and Arkansas), Chamberlin’s Natural Foods (five, located in central Florida) and Earth Origins Market (five, located on the west coast of Florida).

What makes these stores unique is that two of the three banners, Akin’s and Chamberlin’s, have been open since 1935. They were true natural product stores before there was such a thing.

than in the pre-period.

Since its launch, the program has made remarkable progress. Last year, the amount of digitally engaged shoppers more than doubled, digital coupon usage grew and average identified shopper baskets are nearly twice the size of unidentified shoppers.

Through the successful rollout of the Harps Rewards App, Ganoung has increased loyalty and profitability for Harps while ensuring the grocer has the flexibility and necessary tools to remain competitive in the long run.

While the umbrella banner of The Healthy Edge Retail Group only came to be a few years ago, all three banners have a long history of serving the customers in each market for many decades.

Each of the banners have navigated numerous competitive retailers and have continued to be able to go toe-to-toe with even the largest “super natural” stores.

Many of the team members throughout the company have celebrated 10-plus years with the company, which is largely unheard of in times of high turnover for retailers.

Hugo’s Family Marketplace

Hugo’s Family Marketplace was founded by Hugo and Dorothy Magnuson in 1939. Their son, Curt Magnuson, operated the stores until his passing in 2007. At that time, Kristi Magnuson Nelson, his daughter, became the president and CEO of the company. Hugo’s is supplied by UNFI.

Hugo’s operates 12 supermarkets, seven liquor stores, two pubs, four pharmacies and nine Caribou Coffee shops throughout North Dakota and Minnesota.

Kaune’s Neighborhood Market

Kaune’s provides a unique grocery shopping experience in that its products are more curated than simply selected. Shoppers can find everyday staple items at the store in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but it also provides so much more to delight their tastebuds and bring out their inner chefs.

Kaune’s has the most delectable, handcrafted chocolates, freshly baked breads and easy-to-prepare meals for those timecrunched families. Established in 1896, the company has been providing nourishing, indulging products to help families celebrate each and every day since.

It specializes in quality, service and hard-to-find grocery items. Cheryl Sommers has elevated Kaune’s into a comfortable and upscale boutique market for foodies and non-foodies alike.

Leevers Supermarkets

For three generations, Leevers Supermarkets has been bringing low prices and quality products to all of the communities it serves.

Norm Leevers founded Leevers Supermarkets in 1938, when he opened his first IGA store in Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Since then, the Leevers family has seen many changes throughout more

than 80 years in business. Through many different banners in many different communities, the family has continued the Leevers’ legacy.

The family currently operates grocery stores throughout the front range of Colorado, the Mid-Atlantic region and the greater St. Louis area.

Lowe’s Market

Lowe’s Market was selected as The Shelby Report of the Southwest’s Retailer of the Year for 2022. In regard to the longterm dedication of most leadership executives at Lowe’s, Roger Lowe Sr. and Roger Lowe Jr. have been instrumental.

Lowe’s has continued to grow each year. Its stores are distributed through Affiliated Foods.

“God, family and groceries” are their guiding forces.

Based in Littlefied, Texas, Lowe’s is a regional chain primarily in West and Southwest Texas and throughout New Mexico.

Pruett’s Foods

Ray Pruett of Pruett’s Foods has been very successful in rural Oklahoma with his store locations. However, coming into Oklahoma City, he has had to adjust to not only the inner-city customer but also highend locations.

With a totally different demographic than what he was used to, it was a bit of a learning curve, but Pruett has been successful with these stores called Uptown Grocery.

Taking on this tremendous feat, it is a big hats off to Pruett and his team. Founded in 1953 by R.C. Pruett, Pruett’s Foods consists of 12 grocery stores in Oklahoma, a standalone pharmacy and one grocery store in Arkansas.

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Shoppin Baskit

The Shoppin Baskit team, led by Dennis Strobel (owner) and Sam Sanchez (DM) operate four stores in West Texas. Store conditions are always pristine, and the stores are well maintained with continuous investments made over the years. Sales grew with the pandemic, and Shoppin Baskit did a excellent job of growing sales through 2022 and holding them in 2023. The Shoppin Baskit team runs a tight ship on expenses, which allows them to keep prices low and maintain market share that would make many independents envious. Shoppin Basket does a great job of catering to the locals as well as the hunters who visit the area in the fall.

In summary, the Shoppin Baskit team does a great job of meeting the needs of their communities and are rewarded with their support.

United Supermarkets

Super C Mart

Super C Mart is a family-owned independent grocery store that is serving the Oklahoma community with eight locations.

The company recently finished constructing a new flagship store that occupies 17,000 square feet in Kingston, Oklahoma. This latest addition serves as another opportunity for Super C to connect with the community while providing quality products and a memorable experience.

The Super C team strives to create an environment for employees and customers that cultivates community connection.

President and CEO Nikki Carver was recently appointed to serve on the Associated Wholesale Grocers board, making her the first woman to serve on the panel in its 95-year history. She also is involved in her local community, serving as a volunteer NYSA soccer coach and member of Big Brother Big Sisters of Cleveland County.

Carver supports FFA chapters in nine local school systems, as well as athletic programs and Court Appointed Special Advocates.

The Super C team is also heavily involved in their communities through chambers of commerce and local events, including food drives and donation centers. This impact is felt in each of the communities served by the company’s stores.

In its 107th year of operation, United Supermarkets – dba The United Family – is a Texas-based grocery chain with stores in 54 communities in the Lone Star State and neighboring New Mexico.

A self-distributing company with headquarters and distribution centers in Lubbock, Texas, the company operates 98 stores under five banners: United Supermarkets, Market Street, Amigos, Albertsons Market and United Express. It also has ancillary operations R.C. Taylor Distributing, USM Manufacturing, United Food and Beverage Services and Llano Logistics.

The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Albertsons Companies.

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