A Great Company that Buys Local – Article with Jeff Reasor – Tulsa World
This is an article that was recently in the TulsaWorld with Jeff Reasor’s. Reasor’s is a company that buy’s local and supports local business owners.
Article Title: 5 questions with Jeff Reasor
by: KYLE ARNOLD World Staff Writer
Friday, January 29, 2010
1/29/2010 5:12:27 AM
Jeff Reasor is president of Reasor’s, a Tahlequah-based supermarket chain founded in 1963 by his father, Larry. Reasor’s has 15 locations in northeastern Oklahoma. The family-owned company employs about 3,000 people.
1) Your father founded Reasor’s in 1963. What was your first job working for the business?
The absolute first job I ever did in a store was shucking onions — where you peel the dry outer layer of the onion. I was 6 years old and wasn’t tall enough to reach the counter, so my dad put me in a shopping cart with a box of yellow onions and turned me loose.
My first paying job was separating pop bottles and burning cardboard boxes. I got 35 cents an hour. The office clerk, Sue Saunders, and I worked on my Dad for weeks to get me a raise. He finally relented and raised me to 50 cents an hour. Working 10 to 15 hours per week in 1965, I’d say it was pretty good walking-around money for a fifth-grader.
2) The new store in Jenks has been popular and is starkly different from other Reasor’s locations. Is this design going to be the standard for any new stores or remodels?
Yes, it has received many accolades and I think deservedly so. It’s the only store like it in the state of Oklahoma. You would have to travel to Dallas, New York or the West Coast to see anything like it.
The Jenks store is an accumulation of what our customers want here in Oklahoma coupled with some experiments, coupled with nationwide grocery trends.
We already know some changes we’ll make on the next store and what will change at the Jenks store three years from now when we do some tweaking to our layout. So the next few stores will resemble Jenks in some ways and will be different in others.
3) How has the recession, and ups and downs in your costs, impacted the grocery business?
Any downturn in the economy affects us when it affects our customers. People jokingly tell me that people still have to eat, so we must be immune to the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. People still eat — they just change what they eat. Instead of steak, it may be ground beef or chicken.
In 2009 we saw 10 percent swings in costs on a regular basis, both up and down, sometimes without notice, and contracts were broken on the spot.
One day it cost $2,500 to ship $2,500 worth of product. The next day the same truck of product cost $5,000 to $6,000 just to ship in from California. Think about when gasoline hit $4 a gallon. Many of our vendors — Pepsi, Coke, Frito-Lay — got contracts for fuel at around $4 because everyone thought it was going to $6 a gallon. Well, when it dropped so precipitously it took 90 days to six months for those contracts to expire and that lower fuel expense to hit the market. I know many customers were confused when gasoline dropped but grocery prices didn’t.
And keep in mind that plastic sacks, the clear wrap film on meat and even the meat trays are petro-derived products.
4) Most Reasor’s stores are in Tulsa or the surrounding cities. Has the company ever considered moving its headquarters from Tahlequah to Tulsa?
There are almost 3,000 of us that work at Reasor’s. The vast majority live here in the Tulsa area.
Have we ever considered moving our headquarters? Yes we have, but it would be across town on a piece of property we own in Tahlequah. It’s home to me, and I believe we’ll stay there while I’m around.
It only takes 55 minutes to get to one of the Broken Arrow stores, and I use the time to think and on the way home to wind down. The extra drive in not prohibitive, especially with Bluetooth and a cell phone.
5) What kind of trends are we likely to see in grocery stores during the new decade
Technology is going to allow us to control inventory better to get the right product, in the right store, at the right time to meet that neighborhood’s needs. The stores will probably get smaller.
We’ll take the things we learn in Jenks about prepared food and fold them in at other stores as we see success and demand for those services. As one of my competitors of knowledge said, “You just don’t do the things Reasor’s is doing unless you’re planning to grow.”
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Article Title: 5 questions with Jeff Reasor
by: KYLE ARNOLD World Staff Writer
Friday, January 29, 2010
1/29/2010 5:12:27 AM