>> That's a great question.
Well a thing that I've always
been passionate about is food.
I've always enjoyed great food and I--
and I also enjoy wine, particularly.
I'm not, you know, I drink other-- other
beverages, but I find wine something
that just really pairs beautifully with food.
I love the concept of-- of-- of figuring out
a meal and the wine pairing that goes with it.
I think that's-- that's really cool.
Love to travel, which is another real love
of mine, which dovetails nicely with food
because you find, you know, you think you
understand food until you travel to another part
of the country or another part of the world
and you're really exposed to, you know,
different preparations, different presentations.
You know, in particular parts of the world
food is, you know, people get out of bed
in the morning and literally
their feet aren't on the floor
and they're thinking about what's for dinner.
And you know, sometimes, you know, we're
so busy and wrapped up in our worlds here,
it kind of brings me back to my basics,
you know, self, my roots, and say boy,
you know, food is really important.
There's an adage, you know, people sit
around a table and they're eating together
and dining together, you know, it's-it's the
bonding experience, whether it's with family
or with friends, and I think
food is that common denominator.
So having an exceptionally good meal at
the same time that you're enjoying it
with good friends kind of only enhances,
you know, that-- that experience.
So I'd say my, you know, my passions
primarily revolve around food, wine and travel.
If those are the things I got to do the
rest of my life, I'd be a very happy person.
That being said, you know, every
business comes with challenges.
I think, you know, we, you know, we're
challenged in a couple ways, you know,
I would say the hardest part about
running a business of our size,
we have about two hundred employees in in two
locations, and the biggest challenge is finding
and maintaining a really quality work team, you
know, team of associates to work in our stores.
We do a lot of organizational
development work, where we work with our--
our team on mission, and on our values, and on
our operating principals, and try to get them
to understand from a very, you know, core level,
they don't have to ask me what the right thing
to do if they know our missions statement.
They're going to know the right decision to make
when they're dealing with a product, a vendor,
a customer, you know, what have you, and-- and
those are the kinds of things that I try to do
on a-- on a basic level, you
know, in introducing people.
But ultimately it's up to good raw materials.
You know, you can take good folks, you can
continue to teach them your company's values
and hopefully find a little
bit of passion for food.
People who enjoy people.
So I'd say that that's probably the
biggest challenge is finding the people
that really enjoy our type of business.
I think other-- other challenges we have
in the business are maintaining rel--
maintaining our relevancy in a marketplace
that's crowded with other people selling food.
If I look back fifteen years ago, I
just did this analysis the other day,
one of our stores that's
located in a-- in a newer--
newer community, that's been there
for fifteen years, as I said, they--
they've had a five hundred
and sixty thousand square feet
of new supermarket retail space
open up in the last fifteen years.
In a community that's had
pretty moderate growth.
I mean, you know, low single digit growth.
So what's happening is the pie seems to
be getting sliced thinner and thinner,
more and more people are
out there doing what we do.
So, part of our other challenge
would be maintaining our relevancy.
You know, we've-- we've been
around for almost a hundred years.
We're the longtime player.
We should be the guy to knock
off the mountain, but you know,
they sometimes are the shiny new penny that
just showed up and we've got to continue
to keep ourselves out there and
relevant with-- with our customers.