Retailer of the Year/Food Industry Hall of Fame

surgery on my right foot and try to reconstruct it because a couple of muscles were dead. That was 1950, and I have got to tell you the doctors did a hell of a job, because my body held up for about 55 more years before it started falling apart and I started getting all this metal.

My parents got divorced when I was 6 or so. My mother was a very, very smart gal. She was in Dallas helping to design fighter aircraft for Chance Vought and then Douglas hired her away to help design the DC-8, so we moved to Long Beach where the Douglas plant was. That’s how I ended up in California. Since my parents were divorced, I would go back to my grandfather’s farm every summer and work on the farm. I did that for about 10 years.

My grandfather put me on the corner downtown to sell truckloads of watermelons while he went to the bar, so that was my first retail job.

Did you have siblings?

I had two younger brothers, and I’d come home from school and have to babysit most of the time.

You played sports in school?

Yes. I played football in high school (he was captain of the team) and then one year in college. I found out I was too small and too slow.

But sports is what got me into the grocery business. Because I played every sport—basketball, baseball and football—I needed a job at night after practice. So I got a job sorting bottles.

The wooden crates, the bottles…

Yeah. One size—12 ounces—that was the only pop you could buy.

Sampson: Miller’s Work Ethic Is ‘Second to None’

Shane Sampson, EVP and chief marketing and merchandising officer, has more than 35 years of grocery industry experience, most of them with Albertsons.

Having grown up in a family that worked in the grocery business, Sampson began his career at Albertsons as a courtesy clerk in the 1980s. He worked up through the ranks to eventually become president of both the Florida and Intermountain divisions. He left Albertsons in 2002 for Sam’s Club and stayed there until 2006, when Albertsons was sold off to entities including Supervalu, CVS and an investor group. He was VP of marketing and merchandising for Albertsons LLC’s Southern Division that was formed at the time.

He again left Albertsons to become SVP of sales and operations for Ahold’s Giant of Landover banner in the East. He returned to Albertsons in 2013 as president of its Shaw’s and Star Market banner stores in New England. In 2014, he moved to Chicago to become president of the Jewel-Osco division. In 2015, he moved to Boise to take on his current role.

Bob Miller was a regional EVP when Sampson first met him; Sampson says he was “running up and down the aisles in a store as a grocery manager” at the time. Sampson had become a store manager by the time Miller left Albertsons to go to Fred Meyer as CEO. Miller was the one who asked Sampson to come back in 2006.

Sampson has worked closely with Miller for a number of years—and today has an office next door to his. He says that Miller’s “work ethic is second to none. Bob’s a very, very hard worker; has been his entire life. It’s because he loves what he does.”

And he continues to keep his eye on shoppers.

“He never loses sight of his relationship with the customer,” according to Sampson. “He always thinks about the customer at every single level. He wants to give customers what they want at a price they’re willing to pay, with lots of tender loving care.”

Store visits are important to Miller, and “when Bob’s in a store, he’s talking to the people,” Sampson says. “He’ll talk to the store manager for a while, but then he’ll go talk to all the department heads and then he’s up front talking to the cashiers and courtesy clerks.”

Outside the business, Miller values Albertsons’ vendor partners, Sampson says. Miller continues to attend the vendor-sponsored golf tournament, the Boise Open, which had its 29th event in September.

“Even at this time in his career, he’s going out and entertaining our sponsors, raising money for charity at a worthwhile event. He’s a tireless worker,” Sampson says.

Inside Albertsons offices is “a really open, collaborative work environment, and he’s the one that fosters that,” Sampson says of Miller. “There’s no ‘mahogany row’; every door is open. I think that breeds a lot of teamwork. It’s been great to be around that kind of team and that kind of team leader.”

Sampson says that Miller continues to lead the Albertsons team to think innovatively. He encourages company executives to develop next-generation type stores, such as the Albertsons on Broadway in Boise (see page 74) and the new Market Street Idaho stores, fashioned after the Market Street stores its United division in Texas operates. He also encourages innovation in areas such as Albertsons own-brand products, prepared foods programs, e-commerce and meal kits (shown in the acquisition of Plated).

“Not everybody’s doing those things and not everybody’s doing those things at this time in his career,” Sampson says. “He’s very much an innovator.”