Page 7 - BusinessWest January 22, 2024

“It’s becoming harder and harder, given the environment in Massachusetts and Connecticut, to get development of new sites going. As the development costs continue to increase, increase, increase, we’ve had to walk
away from some locations because it didn’t make any financial sense anymore.”
Bossie agreed, noting that, as the workplace evolves and the workforce becomes increasingly dominated by the younger genera- tions, companies must responsive to their employees’ needs and expectations if they want to be successful.
“We have to be focused on the things they like to do and want to do, more so than me working night crew in 1986,” he said. “That kind of work might not be appealing to this latest generation of employees that we have, so we have to manage our business dif- ferently; we have to employ different tools and strategies and con- tinue to ask, ‘what makes our workforce most satisfied and most engaged, and how can they serve our customers the best?’
“We did business much the same way for decades, but over the past five years, the pace of change has greatly accelerated,” he went on. “We have to stay current, we have to stay educated, we have to stay knowledgeable, and we have to be able to share that wisdom and knowledge with our teams out in the stores.”
As for growth of the company’s portfolio of supermarkets and other facilities, there will opportunities for organic growth and acquisition, and especially the later, said Michael D’Amour, adding that the company has already seen some of these opportunities, and there will be more in the years to come.
“There are some companies that don’t have succession plans, and others that have been struggling since the pandemic,” he noted, adding that there are independent stores and several smaller chains of stores that could become acquisition targets in the near future. “We’ve seen some opportunities already, and we’re going to con- tinue to look at them and vet them fully; we think that’s going to be a big part of our growth over the next few years.
“We’re not going to buy Kroger tomorrow,” he went on, referring to the Ohio-based supermarket giant. “But something digestible, anything between one store and 25 to 30 stores tops, and it has to be contiguous to our marketplace; we’re not going to leapfrog into Minnesota or Florida. We’re going to be very opportunistic with our vehicles for growth.”
Jasmin agreed, noting that the company has always taken a cal- culated, thoughtful approach to growth — not growing for growth’s sake — and that this mindset will continue moving forward.
The Big Y Express Market in downtown Springfield is one of
the many additions
to the company’s portfolio in recent years.
Charlie D’Amour concurred, noting that acquisition will almost certainly be the preferred path to continued growth, given the mounting challenges to finding sites for new stores and then clear- ing all the hurdles on the way to cutting a grand-opening ribbon.
To make his point, he cited the chain’s store in Clinton, Conn., a facility that took six years to open from start to finish, more than double the time it would have taken maybe a decade or so ago.
“It’s becoming harder and harder, given the environment in Mas- sachusetts and Connecticut, to get development of new sites going,” he said. “As the development costs continue to increase, increase, increase, we’ve had to walk away from some locations because it didn’t make any financial sense anymore.” BW
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