Sue Klug, senior vice president of marketing and merchandising working out of Fullerton for Albertsons LLC, recently was named one of the “Top Women in Grocery” by Progressive Grocer, a trade magazine.
The accolade is special to Klug,who covers 290 Albertsons in Southern California,because not many women hold top positions in the grocery world. It’s still a male-dominated industry, she said. But that’s changing.
This year, six of the 50 people on the list were women.
And Klug said she’d like to see that number keep growing.
“You can carve out a great career in the grocery business,” she said, in niches such as marketing, merchandising, legal and finance. “It offers many, many opportunities.”
Klug was trained to see those opportunities from birth.
While she got her MBA from the University of Southern California and her undergraduate degree in food industry management,a program that now exists as a certificate program,the grocery business was in her blood.
Her grandfather worked at Vons. So did her mother and father. In fact, her parents met there.
“It’s really a fun business as far as consumer dynamics,” Klug said.
Klug’s job also involves merchandising,choosing what goes on the shelf, where it goes and how it’s priced and promoted. It’s a matter of picking the right items and charging the right prices, she said.
Being a woman in the business helps with those decisions, she said. Two-thirds of Albertsons shoppers are female.
She also tries to get store time.
|
|
Klug: named one of “Top Women in Grocery” |
“I try to be there a day a week,” she said. “I’m often out on the weekends.”
That’s when she does the shopping for her family.
“I try to take on that shopper mentality,” Klug said.
The grocery business has had to adapt to changing customer habits and more competition.
Traditional grocers are being squeezed from all over,by the smaller, pricier chain grocers such as Whole Foods and Wild Oats, by the low-priced specialty stores such as Trader Joe’s, and by regional grocers, such as Bristol Farms or Gelson’s.
Moreover, Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have invaded the grocery business traditionally held by Albertsons, Vons and other chains.
“It causes us to evolve our thinking,” Klug said.
Where the traditional groceries are ahead in the evolutionary curve is on their in-store know-how. Wal-Mart doesn’t have a butcher to talk about prime rib or a produce person to help you find the right watermelon, Klug said.
“They’ve helped us get better,” she said.
A trend Albertsons is minding: shortened meal preparation time. The chain tries to limit checkout lines to three shoppers and expects its meat department, for one, to have a quick sound bite on how to prepare an item.
Quick doesn’t mean unhealthy eating, according to Klug.
“Health and wellness,that’s mainstream,” she said.
Albertsons, part of Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu Inc., expects to open about six stores this year and six the next, she said. Supervalu has nearly $40 billion in sales and employs 200,000 workers. Supervalu is the No. 2 grocer after Cincinnati-based Kroger Co.
Down Barometer
Orange County auto registrations, a barometer of sales, were down a whopping 10% for July from a year earlier, according to the Costa Mesa-based Orange County Auto Dealers Association’s monthly report.
Even steadfast Toyota/Scion was down 8% with 3,520 autos registered.
Taking the big hits were Cadillac, at 141 registrations, down 36%; GMC, 239, down 40%; Hummer, 36, down 75%; and Pontiac, 38, down 64%.
There were some bright spots.
Lexus was up 26.5% to 831. But that largely can be attributed to Newport Lexus, which has been open just a year. Mitsubishi was up 58%, with 152 registrations, Porsche up 16% to 94, and Mini Cooper, up 98% with 152.
Rounding out OC’s luxury brands: BMW was up nearly 9% with 603 registrations, while Mercedes-Benz was down 20% to 681.
Looking at year-to-date sales through July, Saturn saw the biggest jump in registrations, up 53.5%, followed by Mazda, up 42%, Audi, up 20%, Mini, up nearly 15%, Lexus up 12%, Jeep up 12% and BMW, up nearly 3%.
At the bottom of the heap for year-to-date sales were Chrysler and Saab, both down about 38%.
