Day 17

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The highlight of today was the WAFC donor luncheon, an opportunity to show appreciation to the donor companies for the generous financial support that makes the Food Industry Managment program possible. The event was held at USC's Town & Gown where we had the opportunity to dine and network with about 150 other retailers, distributors, and manufacturers, nearly half of whom were graduates of either the FIM program or the FIM Executive program.

Jim Lee, President of Stater Brothers, and Karl Schroeder, President of Safeway Northern California, both spoke passionately about WAFC's education mission and encouraged the donors to continue their support into the future. Karl talked a lot about the importance of keeping the long term benefits of the program in mind and acknowledged how difficult it is in today's environment, where Wall Street is focused on short term profits, for companies to resist the pressure to do the same. This dove-tailed nicely with what Professors Arnold and Hill have been talking about this week in different contexts. Karl was an exceptional speaker and if you have the opportunity to hear him I highly recommend it. He has a very honest, conversational style that is very persuasive. He obviously believes strongly in the power of education to transform our industry, particularly with the Retail Management Certificate community college program.

During the event I also had the opportunity to talk with Dick King, President of Associated Food Stores and a really nice guy. Two past FIM students from Associated have worked for Haggen and Dick had a lot of nice things to say about our company including that he thinks it was a real benefit for those students to work with us and be able to take that knowledge back home with them. Associated works with a lot of single store family-owned independent retailers and this year is sponsoring my classmate Stephanie Herr. Stephanie works for her parents at Roy's Market in Elko, Nevada and, as I may have mentioned, is the youngest of our class at 23, but she's a real go-getter and can definately hold her own. She's in two of my working groups and makes a great contribution to the team.

My day wrapped up with three group meetings from 2-7:30 and then Nielsen research for our Case Study project until 11pm.