Letter From the Family

We’re Prepared For Just About Anything That Comes Our Way

by Donald Rouse, Chairman, Rouses Markets

My father always preached to me that if we are standing still, we are moving backward, and that is how we have always operated.

It goes all the way back to the first store that we opened in Houma: that when there is an emergency such as a hurricane, we are the last store to close before the storm approaches, and we are the first one to open afterward. We always ask for volunteers, and our team members always step up. And we don’t do all that for us. We do it for our customers.

Some of the large chains, I’ve watched them sit closed for three, four, five days after a disaster, and if it wasn’t for Rouses in some of these markets, there would be no one open at all. So I realize how important it is to the community that we are there for them, and that is true for this challenge that we face now, as well.

When we got the first inkling of what could happen with the coronavirus, we got in front of it. Our buyers went out and secured truckloads and truckloads of product, of groceries, of meat — right away, we bought over $15 million of meat so that our customers would not have to go without. You walk into any of our competitors, and you will see that they are very low on meat and other items, and in some places, they have none at all.

But throughout all of this, we have been able to keep our stores as full as possible. We secured truckloads of every product we could locally, and on the open market in the region, and then the rest of the U.S.A., and next we took it a step further and secured product in Mexico and Canada. Which means when other stores were empty, we had toilet tissue and paper towels and peanut butter and bleach and cereals for our customers, and it also helped us keep our prices fair. That’s very important to us and our business.

There are not as many grocers as there once were. When the “big box” stores moved in, they put a lot of supermarkets out of business. I always tell our team that one day it’s going to be us versus Walmart — and we are almost there in a lot of our markets. For that reason, it is very important that we do a great job for our customers. The people at the top of those big boxes are not concerned about the little markets here along the Gulf Coast. They’ve got a bigger fish to fry. Our communities — they are our responsibility, and we are very proud of it. We got a lot of new customers when this disaster struck because we had products that the big competitors didn’t. We are glad to have those new customers and we are glad to service them. It is an honor and a responsibility that we do not take lightly.

When the virus first appeared, I got on a plane to see what was happening out there. We’ve never experienced anything like this, and I wasn’t going to sit around and not find out as much as I could! States to the west of us were having more problems, and quicker; I figured I could pick up some ideas of what they were seeing and what they were doing, and we could implement them in our stores to keep our customers and our team members safe. We started providing sanitizing wipes at store entrances, and spraying and sanitizing entire buggies. In addition, our team members continually sanitize everything from shelves to checkout counters to the keypads on the credit card machines.

We also installed plexiglass dividers in checkout lanes to protect customers and team members. We are the only ones to have installed hand washing stations at the front door of every store. We have them serviced every day. We had seen those stations at fairs and big group events, with the towels and the soap dispensers and where you press your foot down and water comes out, and we knew they would be perfect at our stores for keeping our people safe.

Our entire Rouses team is amazing. It has been something to see everyone come together to focus on what we needed to do to take care of our communities. We had smiling faces, people happy to help our customers, and we’ve received hundreds of letters and email messages complimenting our team and how they have handled everything. We are so thankful for our frontline workers, and it is exciting when we can show them how grateful we are for them.

You know, it’s quite amazing to have witnessed all this. My father always talked about emergencies. He would come sit in the office and we would discuss what we would do in different crisis situations. This was not one of those things we talked about! But economically, it was. It may be a long time before things get back to normal, but we are prepared to do what we need to do to take care of our customers. We will always do our best to be first, to move forward, for our community.