Chief Operating Officer / United States
Three decisions that members and colleagues disputed
- Cooperative wholesale net sales
- US$2.14bn
- Fiscal year ended June 2026; cooperative-wide, not my budget
- Independent grocery stores supplied
- 293
- Owned by 214 member companies in five states
- Colleagues in my organisation
- 2,140
- Two distribution centres, fleet, eleven operated stores and food safety
Decisions & consequences
01Capping freezer hours before the 2022 holiday peak
In August 2022 our freezer selectors at Kent were averaging fifty-two hours a week, and the holiday plan assumed more. Frozen volume had grown 11 per cent in two years without additional freezer space or headcount. The freezer team recorded 19 recordable injuries in fiscal 2022, roughly double the rate in our ambient aisles, most of them strains and slips late in long shifts. Two selectors had been treated for cold stress.
The stakes ran in two directions. Frozen orders that missed the cut-off would reach member stores a day late before Thanksgiving. Selectors also depended on overtime; several told me plainly that the extra hours paid their rent.
I decided to cap freezer time at ten hours in a shift and forty-eight in a week, add a second paid warm-up break and rotate selectors into ambient aisles for part of each peak week. Our vice-president of distribution argued for waiting until January, after the peak. The union stewards supported the cap but not the loss of overtime. I accepted both objections as fair and went ahead, because the injury pattern was already in our own records.
We hired forty-six additional selectors on a temporary-to-permanent basis, replaced freezer gloves and liners on a fixed schedule and rewrote the written quota descriptions to state the pace expected after rotation. Added labour and equipment cost about US$2.3 million in the first year.
Freezer recordable injuries fell to 12 in fiscal 2023 and to 8 in fiscal 2024. Frozen order fill dropped from 98.1 to 96.4 per cent during the first peak and recovered to 97.8 per cent by the spring. Eleven experienced selectors left within six months, several for warehouses offering more overtime.
What changed was the way we read productivity: freezer output is now reported beside exposure hours. I would discuss the income effect with selectors earlier and phase the cap in over two pay periods, rather than announce it three weeks before the peak.
Withdrawing a whole chilled salad line when our lot records fell short
In March 2024 a supplier of packaged chilled salads notified us of possible Listeria contamination in two lot codes. Fourteen of its items were sold in 196 member stores and in our own stores. At Troutdale, lot codes were then recorded by hand at receiving, and for that supplier we held usable lot records for only 61 per cent of the cases shipped. We could not say with confidence which stores held the named lots.
The supplier asked us to withdraw only those two lots and argued that a wider withdrawal would suggest a broader problem than its testing showed. Our merchandising team was worried about empty chilled cases before the Easter weekend. Several member owners called to ask why they should clear product the supplier had not recalled.
Our director of food safety and quality recommended withdrawing every lot of all fourteen items. I supported her and committed the cooperative to full credits for members. The decision was hers to make on safety grounds; the cost was mine to explain to our chief executive and the board. We notified stores within two hours through the member portal and text alerts and asked each to confirm removal.
Credits and disposal cost US$612,000. The supplier reimbursed US$240,000, covering the two named lots, and declined the rest. Nine days later it extended its own recall to a third lot code, which our wider withdrawal had already taken off the shelves. No illness connected with our stores was reported to us.
We then funded barcode scanning of lot codes at receiving for chilled categories at both centres, and lot capture for those categories reached 97 per cent by mid-2025. Our supplier agreements now set out recall cost-sharing before an incident occurs.
What I would do differently is fund the scanners when a 2022 internal audit first identified the gap. I deferred that project in favour of a warehouse-management upgrade, and the deferral is part of why this withdrawal had to be so broad.
Charging members for the early delivery windows they all preferred
By 2024, 64 per cent of deliveries to member stores were scheduled to arrive between four and eight in the morning. Members chose windows freely and paid the same delivery charge whatever they chose. Our fleet of 200 tractors was sized for that morning peak, while midday tractor use averaged 41 per cent. Drivers started as early as one o'clock, and overtime was concentrated in the hours when fatigue matters most.
A uniform charge was simple, and members valued it. But it meant a store accepting overnight delivery subsidised a neighbour insisting on five o'clock. Because delivery charges affect each member's patronage allocation, the change needed board approval, and most of our directors are members who receive those trucks.
I proposed a premium of US$38 for each early-window delivery and a discount of US$22 for overnight unattended delivery into a temperature-monitored, access-controlled receiving room. Two member directors argued that rural stores receiving one or two trucks a week had no real alternative, and one voted against. We gave up part of the change to answer that concern: stores taking fewer than three deliveries a week were exempt for the first year, at a cost of about US$600,000.
Before the vote we published route-cost data for every lane to all members. From January 2025, planners helped each store that asked to move its window.
After twelve months the early-window share had fallen to 47 per cent, and thirty-one stores had moved to overnight unattended receiving. We retired 14 tractors at the end of their service lives without replacement, avoiding about US$2.6 million of capital spending, and driver overtime fell 18 per cent. Three members moved part of their purchasing to another wholesaler, reducing our annual sales by about US$4.1 million.
What I would do differently is run a full-quarter pilot with a panel of members before taking the proposal to the board. The data persuaded the directors; a pilot would have persuaded more of the members who pay the fee.