CEO of Stew Leonard’s weighs in on grocery icon
With any number of things on the plate this past summer, including a seventh Stew Leonard’s store in New Jersey and the runup to next month’s milestone of a half century in business, CEO Stew Leonard Jr. carved out time as well for a “Shark Tank” inspired competition.
The event drew at the outset more than 130 foodie entrepreneurs with ideas for everything from traditional meatballs to the eggplant variety.
“There were really only 12 (finalists), because one of the considerations was that you had to demo your product for a month in the stores,” Leonard said this week, during a talk with members of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce. “What we said to them was that if your product does well, we’ll put you in all seven stores — and your business will go from zero to like $500,000 probably.
“We have four local businesses now up on their feet — and we want to do that even more,” he added. “We’re going to get through the holidays right now, but that was a real cool thing.”
The 2019 holidays marks the 50th anniversary of Stew Leonard Sr. getting his nascent dairy store onto its feet, in December 1969.
Over the past three decades under his son Leonard Jr., Stew Leonard’s has added grocery stores in its home state in Danbury and
Newington, as well as in Yonkers, N.Y. and on Long Island; and in New Jersey.
With its homespun, farmstand layout, ample samples and whimsical characters costumed and animatronic alike, Stew Leonard’s expansion of the past decade has generated excitement in the region that only a few other grocers have matched, a short list that includes Wegman’s, Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s.
“The main reason why my wife ultimately agreed to move to Connecticut was in large part due to the fact that — and I quote — ‘there is a Stew Leonard’s in Danbury,’” said P.J. Prunty, who was installed last year as CEO of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce.
‘What was that platter worth?’
Stew Leonard’s has annual sales of nearly $500 million, with that number to grow next year
with the addition of its latest store this past September, in a converted Sears store at the Paramus Park mall in New Jersey.
“What we’re trying to do with the stores is keep it more family focused and exciting — you know, a lot of show and tell,” said Stew Leonard Jr. on Thursday. “Keeping that instore experience really exciting is key, and ... doing a lot of (culinary) demos. As a matter of fact, when I walked in here this morning, a lady said, ‘where’s the samples?’
“People eat so much stuff when they walk through the door,” he added. “What we actually joke about a little bit is that we’re going to take all the price tags off all the products at the store, and we’ll keep shopping at Stew’s very simple — we’ll just weigh in on the way in, and weigh in on the way out.”
Leonard seldom fails to reference for audiences boulders positioned the entrance to the company’s stores, engraved with its two precepts for customer service: the customer is always right, and “if
the customer is ever wrong, reread rule 1.”
But he peppers those reminders with fresh anecdotes, including in Danbury while relaying how he planned to compensate a woman for an $80 handicap parking ticket she disputed with a gift card or a turkey dinner; and another episode of late in which a store chef had advised a customer his sense that her catering order appeared insufficient to feed the dozen people she was expecting for a Sunday brunch.
Running out of food that morning, the customer called to complain hotly that the chef had not been more insistent on his food estimate, with another store staff member fielding the call and dispatching an extra platter — and pronouncing it on the house upon delivery.
“Now I wouldn’t have done that,” Leonard said, drawing laughs. “But you know, the 12 women she was having at the house were all realestate agents. ... She said, ‘don’t be surprised when they go to sell a house, they
will also sell Stew Leonard’s. So what was that platter worth?”
Platter production is gearing up in earnest with the approach of Thanksgiving, with holiday catering on the rise as the case with the company’s budding home delivery business.
Stew Leonard’s has orders in as well for 70,000 Christmas trees for sale as the calendar flips to its anniversary milestone month of December — but first things first.
“We got all these turkeys — and you sit there and you go, ‘How are we going to sell all these?’ ” he said. “What is interesting ... is the trend in the business is that people are calling up the store and wanting everything done — they want the turkey cooked already so they can just bring it home and warm it up. They want the mashed potatoes, the gravy, all the sides — they want it all done. And that business, with all the catering, I think we doubled what we did last year.”