Retailer of the Year/Food Industry Hall of Fame

campaign where we are trying to remodel 10 percent of our stores every year. We’ve been doing that for three years, pretty close to that number. And we still continue to do upgrades in the stores that aren’t a remodel, so we’ve spent well over $4 billion in our first three years since the Safeway acquisition in capital.

So, our company’s in pretty good shape, and we are excited about continuing to spend remodel money, but also do some interesting things. Like if you go into our remodeled Pavilions stores in Southern California, you’ll see a store for the future.

And you should go in our store right here that we just opened (Albertsons on Broadway in Boise); it’s the store we’d like to build in a lot of places.

I was just in there this morning.

They have lots of service, lots of foodservice, high quality.

The Market Street banner that was acquired along with United Supermarkets—what made you want to take that to other markets outside of Texas (Market Street Idaho)?

Because it’s so successful. Big volume. The fresh mix in those stores is probably 10 percent better than a conventional store. Our fresh mix is over 40 percent of our business in the company; in those stores, it’s much higher than that. We make money, we have high quality, we have lots of foodservice, and that’s really a knockoff of what we’ve done here (in Albertsons on Broadway). This is a Market Street, really. This one we put a lot more grocery. I don’t know if you noticed the grocery variety down the aisles, but there’s a lot of variety that’s there. Stuff that people can’t get.

So Market Street has a place. We’re going to try to build what we’ll call a flagship store in most of our divisions. I think it’s an opportunity for the division presidents to see some things that work that they may want to do in other stores. So, we are excited about that concept.

You are entering in a new chapter here, as chairman of the board. What does that look like?

Well, it’s a week old, so I don’t know.

But here’s what I feel really good about. Number one, we have a terrific CEO (Jim Donald). I’ve known him since 1977, met him in Florida. I was the head of merchandising for our Florida division. He was an assistant manager in a store. I went to that store to cover the inventory, so I was there from 4 to midnight