Store manager wants to own his own store by the time he’s 35
RICHARD BENNETTS is aiming high – planning to own and operate his own supermarket by the time he is 35 – and is receiving every encouragement from his employers to achieve his dream.
Bennetts, 27, has been store manager for just a year at New World Pahiatua but both the store owners and Foodstuffs Wellington believe he has what it takes.
Earlier this year he was granted a scholarship to be part of the inaugural Foodstuffs senior management training programme with the newly formed Foodstuffs Academy.
The Academy programme has been tailor-made to nurture the future leaders of the Foodstuffs cooperative.
“Foodstuffs has given me every opportunity along the way and I’m lucky to have had mentors within the business who have seen potential in me,” Bennetts said.
He thinks it’s not bad for a lad who started work in home town Pahiatua helping his father in a home-kill butchery and went on to pack meat at night for PAK’n SAVE in Palmerston North. He was soon in charge of packers in the day shift, then completed a butchery apprenticeship and ended up second in charge of the butchery.
“When I saw the store manager’s job advertised for the New World back in Pahiatua, I thought it would be a worthwhile experience just to go through the interview process to learn what I could. It was quite a leap for the owners Jason and Rachel Griggs to take me on when I hadn’t even been a department manager before.”
In his aspiration to become an owner-operator, Bennetts is following the example of the Griggs, who have formed a strong husband-wife team to operate Pahiatua New World.
Bennetts plans to form an ownership partnership with wife Irene who is a finance officer with a Palmerston North trust.
“Our skills are complementary so I think we’ll make a great team,” he says.
Senior training
The new Academy management programme that he is taking part in has been designed by leading business trainer David Forman to suit Foodstuffs’ business objectives.
It includes three eight-day modules being run over a two-year period: Leadership for the 21st Century; Smart Business Thinking and Financial Know-How; Self-Leadership and Personal Effectiveness; Understanding and Driving the Customer Experience; Building High-Performing Teams; The Science of Shopping; Managing for Operational Excellence; Human Capital and Presenting with Confidence.
Foodstuffs general manager for Marketing and Retail Services George Sutherland says, “Foodstuffs has always relied on motivated people, both internally and externally, who indicate a desire to own their own business.
“We take steps to prove their suitability and provide encouragement and training for the right people. It is very important that we have on-going teams of skilled people to manage and own the number of stores we are going to open, many of which will have staff of up to 350 and departments that are businesses in their own right.
“Great people are the key to our success. Our new Academy professional development programme will provide a structured opportunity to tap into the skills and talent of our people - ensuring their future success and that of Foodstuffs.”
Mentoring
Mentoring by other senior management or owner-operators is a vital part of the process by which aspiring owneroperators achieve their dreams.
The Griggs are Bennetts’ mentors and have shown him how dreams can be achieved. Jason, 40, and Rachel, 34, left high flying jobs at The Warehouse and Bendon head offices in Auckland four years ago and sold up everything, almost down to the clothes off their backs, to realise their dream of owning a supermarket.
A phone call came out of the blue from a friend who said, if they were serious about their dream, come home to the Wairarapa and show Foodstuffs they had what it takes.
The Griggs applied and advanced through the approvals process of personal and financial suitability that Foodstuffs requires of its potential owner-operators.
“There were no guarantees. We had to start over again and work really hard,” Griggs says. “It’s one thing to have a dream; it’s another to be offered the chance to make it happen.
We did a lot of soul-searching about whether we really wanted to make it a reality.”
They have been the owneroperators of Pahiatua New World for 18 months. In the previous two and a half years, their friend Paul De Lara-Bell, himself a Foodstuffs owner-operator in Masterton, was their mentor and employed Griggs as his store manager. Griggs had plenty of supermarket experience in his early career, starting as a night shift shelfstacker at 15 and progressing through management courses to running Woolworths supermarkets.
Both he and Rachel built up extensive retail careers, gaining the people and departmental management and self discipline skills that indicated to Foodstuffs that they were ideal candidates.
“Rachel and I took a big risk. It’s been tough the past four years but we love our work to pieces. There’s nothing more motivating than owning your own business. I have no problem getting up each morning and getting down here to the store,” Mr Griggs says.
