The Safeway Opportunity

I was lucky enough to get a part time job at Safeway (now owned by Woolworths) at 14 years 9 months (minimum legal age) for the princely sum of 65c an hour - and that simple thing changed the direction of my life.

The Store Manager, the incredible Mr Frank Waters, was also a District Manager and he mentored me and created opportunities that gave me an amazing start.

By age 19 I had finished two years in Business School while still working the overnight restocking shift and he invited me to join the Safeway Management Training program. When I completed that and was successful running stores he then asked me to consider becoming a Grocery Buyer at Head Office. I was still studying for my degree and had already made that study part time to work in Store Management so initially I said no - twice...

On the third invitation I accepted and became the Safeway brand buyer in Groceries and also put my Business School studies to work in a practical environment. This taught me a lot about how products went to market and how the Safeway systems worked and I began to build relationships inside and outside the business.

In short order I ended up representing Safeway in the Australian Retailer Association, State and National, Young Retail Executive of the Year competition - and won both. The prize was a trip to the US - which was huge. I spent 2 weeks of the trip staying with colleague Ted Allen on campus at USC, and 4 weeks touring Safeway and top retail competitor operations around the US, and even met Safeway President Mr Peter Magowan in Oakland.

The benefit of that trip was huge. It gave me perspective and insight about what where we were headed. When I returned to Australia I was promoted to Grocery Buyer and also asked if I would Chair the Grocery Buying Committee - which I then did for three years. By the end of that time I was appointed National Grocery Merchandise Manager for Australian Safeway - at the ripe old age of 24.

On the Safeway Grocery Buying Committee we saw up to 80 product presentations a week - so roughly 10,000 during my time. We implemented a system where we would range promising products for 3 months testing and then revisit them to check results for a final decision. That process taught me so much about what worked and what didn't. Especially with regard to product formulation, packaging design and launch promotion.

Apart from leading Buying, the two core strategies I introduced were: the Mother and Baby program, and the introduction of Health Foods. Mothers with young babies are at a vulnerable and difficult stage of their lives and the strategy was to provide them the best baby range and value in the market and convert them as customers for life.

The Health Food strategy was tricky. None of the companies in the market would supply to us - they would only supply to stores with health food advisers and Naturopaths on staff. We solved that by using my Business School learning and making an acquisition of an existing Health Food company called Naytura. They already stocked all of the brands we wanted and had a flagship store in the center of Melbourne. Under Australian Law I knew that suppliers could not withhold supply from existing stockists and so we then had access to the full range and started rolling out Naytura departments in-store. Branding on this range transitioned to Macro.

This incredible setup gave me the contacts and credibility to start my own consulting business when I left Safeway.