2019 Smart & Final HOF Hirz

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame Inductee

Dave Hirz, President and CEO of Smart & Final

Many executives took grocery jobs as teenagers to help pay for school or have some gas or spending money; it was a means to an end. David G. “Dave” Hirz, president and CEO of Smart & Final in Commerce, California, is one of those rare folks who knew he wanted to make his career in the grocery business right away. At the age of 16, in fact.

Now, for nearly 50 years, Hirz has been working in the food industry. He started at Fazio’s Markets before moving on to Boys Markets, Ralphs and Food 4 Less. He joined the Smart & Final team in 2010 as president and COO before being promoted to president and CEO in 2012.

As you will learn in these pages, Hirz is an incredible leader. He cares deeply about the details of his business, but he also cares deeply about those who work at Smart & Final, as well as his family. Hirz shares about his life before and since his career started, and members of his executive team share some reasons why Hirz indeed belongs in the Food Industry Hall of Fame.

Dave Hirz was born in 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio. His dad worked for New York Central Railroad—following in his own father’s footsteps—beginning when he was 15 and working there through retirement at 62. Dave’s mom was a nurse, initially working in the emergency room and later in the neonatal unit. They worked alternate shifts—dad working days and mom working nights—to provide for their eight children. The eighth child was finally a girl, Hirz told The Shelby Report’s VP-West Bob Reeves, who sat down with Hirz and his wife Julie at their home in Southern California for this story.

“The eighth child was my sister Linda, and then they stopped. I don’t know if they had that many because they wanted a girl but that’s the story I like to tell. Seven boys and a girl. My mom and dad were remarkable people, the best parents any kid could ask for.”

Their fourth son died shortly after he was born, in 1954, and Dave was born a year later. Hirz’s older brothers are Tom, Bob and Ken; his younger brothers are Mike and Jim. Linda, of course, is the youngest. His three oldest siblings remain in the Cleveland area; two others are in Kentucky; one is in Florida.

Hirz talked about childhood, his career and many other topics in this extensive interview.

How was it to grow up in a large family?

It was really fun growing up in a big family. We never ate out at a restaurant. I remember the first time I had food out. I was about 15 and my brothers sent me on my bike to get us hamburgers from McDonald’s. I thought I had died and gone to heaven; it was way better than our normal weekly fare of pot pies, TV dinners or fish sticks. Having that many kids and no money, we ate at home all the time. But we never went hungry, and it was really fun being the middle child in a big family.

You went to high school in Cleveland?

up. I had a job laying sod and cutting grass when I was 15. One day I was up the street from the house where I lived and was cutting grass. Grass got caught in the lawnmower and I reached in to pull it out and I got my hand cut up in the lawnmower. I lost the top of two of my fingers, but the ambulance stopped on the way to the hospital and picked one of them up and they sewed it back on. That was right before basketball tryouts. I tried out, but you can’t play basketball well with your hand in a cast. So, I joined the wrestling team.

His biggest supporter and fan

According to Dave Hirz, his wife Julie “is a wonderful wife and a terrific partner. She is the reason that I have been able to do what I do, and with her support, have been able to grow in my career.”

I grew up in Cleveland, but when I was in eighth grade, my family moved to North Olmsted, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland, 10 miles west of the city. I was there through high school. When I was 10, my oldest brother, Tom, who is now 70, got a job as a box boy for Fazio’s Supermarkets in Cleveland. My second brother, Bob, a year later also began working at Fazio’s, and then my third brother, Ken, began working there when he turned 16. That’s how I ended up in the grocery business. When I was 15, every day as I walked home from school I would stop by the local Fazio’s store and lobby the store manager to hire me, but he wouldn’t hire me until I turned 16. When I was finally hired at 16, Tom, Bob, Ken and I all worked at different Fazio’s grocery stores in the Cleveland area.

Can you attribute anything to those years that you wrestled that you learned about life?

A mischievous-looking 6-year-old Dave Hirz.

In high school, I was on the wrestling team. At the time—and I remember it like it was yesterday—I was 6’4” and weighed 205 pounds. Anything over 198 was heavyweight. I weighed 205 and didn’t like the idea of having to lose seven pounds. Like today, I enjoyed food too much. So, I didn’t wrestle 198, I wrestled heavyweight, which turned out to be a little bit of a mistake, because I wrestled several 300-pound-plus guys; there was no upper limit back then like there is today. I wrestled heavyweight all four years and I also played football. I was OK at both, but not great. I wrestled in the spring and in the fall I played football, where I was a defensive and offensive tackle for North Olmsted High School.

Not-so-funny story of how I ended up on the wrestling team…I loved playing basketball and tryouts for ninth-grade JV basketball were coming

Oh, absolutely. I think sports in general are really good for kids. Our daughters, Makenzie and Taylor, both played high school basketball and then they both ended up playing college basketball at NYU and UCSD. Our son Chris played baseball through his youth, in high school and college. He was a really strong pitcher who came close to making it into MLB! He now runs a Big League Dreams Sports Park in West Covina. His two kids, our grandchildren, love baseball and soccer. I think sports are so good for kids because you learn that you don’t always win, sometimes you lose. And you learn that it’s not fun to lose, but when you do, you go back and try harder and you work harder and you really focus on what you can do different to make sure that you don’t lose next time.

In wrestling, it’s an individual sport, but there is a team scoring process. It really taught me the importance of training, working out hard, trying to be in better shape to make sure that you are one step ahead of the opponent you are going to face next week, especially if he outweighs you by more than 100 pounds. In the work environment, it’s being a student of the business, being a contributing member of a team and always trying to be better tomorrow.

Football is also a real team sport. I was a tackle, both offensive and defensive, and as an offensive tackle I’m not going to win the game, I’m not going to score any points, but my quarterback and my running back aren’t going to score any points, either, unless the linemen help them. I learned an awful lot in football about the importance of team and teamwork. It doesn’t matter if you have the best quarterback in the world. If he doesn’t have a line to defend him, he’s no good, right? It’s the same in business. I think I’ve had some success in the grocery industry, but it’s only because I’ve always been blessed with strong teams and great people, and tried to always work to surround myself with good people. So, in

Julie has roots in America’s Heartland, born and raised on a 700-acre farm in southern Illinois in the town of Sparta (pop. 4,000). Her family mostly farmed corn and soybeans but also had a working dairy ranch. She drove heavy farm equipment at a young age and managed the cattle and milked the cows every day after school. Her parents still live there today.

Julie has an older brother and two younger sisters. All four of them, as well as her parents, graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She was recruited off campus by Dow Chemical and moved to Florida after college to work for them. She was subsequently transferred to California where she met Dave in 1985, through a mutual friend who also worked for Dow Chemical. Julie and Dave were married in 1989, and their daughter Makenzie was born in 1991, and Taylor in 1994.

Julie worked for Dow Chemical for 20 years involved in pesticides and fumigant sales, in charge of California and Hawaii. She retired when the girls were in grade school to stay home and raise them.

“She is an incredible mom and is involved in the kids’ lives every day—even today, 3,000 miles from Taylor and 7,000 miles away from Makenzie,” Dave says. “She is also constantly involved with our son Christopher, his wife Alissa and our two beautiful grandchildren on a regular basis, and is really the glue that keeps our family together.”

She’s also a terrific cook, he adds. “Unless I am traveling, she makes dinner just about every night of the week, and we spend an hour over dinner, discussing our day.”

It was Julie who encouraged Dave to begin taking college classes, even before they were married. She supported him for eight years as he attended college to get his degree.

“She was an incredible support during those years—with two young children—as my job as a store manager, and in subsequent positions during that time, required me to work six days a week.”

Over the years, the couple have been active in their church as well as with multiple charitable organizations, such as City of Hope, Olive Crest and the American Heart Association.

“Her biggest area of focus—both in her volunteer work, and in her work and financial support with the Hirz Family Foundation—is around children and education,” Dave says.

She is active with the Tustin Public Schools Foundation, where she served on the board of directors for more than 15 years. She still remains active with TPSF, particularly on the investment committee.

On Tuesday evenings, Dave participates in a Bible study group with about 16 other men at Trinity Presbyterian Church and on the same evening, Julie meets for Bible study with 10 women from Mariners Church in Irvine.

In her “spare” time, Julie loves to garden and this year “raised a record crop of tomatoes and squash,” Dave says. In raised planter beds in the backyard, she grows a wide variety of vegetables that she loves to share with her friends, and she uses the fruit from the apple and lime trees at their house to bake pies and pastries that “she shares with all of our neighbors and friends.”

She also finds time for working out most every day and takes weekly tennis lessons and golf lessons with her great group of girlfriends; “she has no trouble keeping incredibly active,” according to her husband, who adds, “She is my rock. She is so stable. She’s my biggest supporter, my biggest fan.”

But she doesn’t hesitate to keep him humble when needed. “When I come home and she wants me to take out the trash, she says, ‘Take out the trash; you’re not the president around here.’”

Julie and Dave Hirz

The Hirz siblings, from left: Tom, Mike, Ken, Linda, Dave, Jim and Bob. Tom is the oldest; Linda is the youngest.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

that case, it’s not much different than high school. If you surround yourself with good people—the right team—and you all have the same goals and you are all focused on achieving those goals, chances are, more times than not, you are going to win. It’s the same today at Smart & Final. I have a strong, really diverse team with different skill sets that are all executing to achieve the same goal. And none of it works unless you have teamwork. Matt Reeve, group VP of sales and merchandising, writes great ads and has good pricing, and Sean Mahony, group VP of store operations, has great store conditions and terrific service. However, if either one of their teams drop a ball, it’s not going to happen—we won’t win. I think any business—but especially the grocery business—is such a team sport. It’s like high school football. You are not going to win unless everybody on the team is executing. If one person—the center, the guard, the tackle, the end, the quarterback—doesn’t do their part, it falls apart.

When you were in high school, did you have a vision as to what you wanted to do with your life?

I did. When I was 16, I finally got hired by Tony Konzac, my first store manager, and I totally fell in love with the grocery business. I loved being a box boy, loved everything about the business, and I knew I wanted to spend my life in the grocery business. In high school, I wasn’t a very good student. I barely got through it, so I knew I probably didn’t want to go to college even though my brother before me did. He was the first one in the family to go to college. I knew that it probably wasn’t for me, and I saw myself 10 or 20 years from then working my way up to be a store manager. When I was 16, I hoped that someday I could manage a store by myself.

You say you weren’t a great student, but you are CEO of a large company. You’re dealing with banks, high-level stuff. Where did all that knowledge come from?

In our industry you learn as you go, and you learn from your team and by doing things. I have always wanted to learn and still today consider myself a student of the business…When I was a box boy, back then the stores closed at 6 o’clock at night and we were closed on Sunday because we all went to church. I would finish by 6:30 or 7 in the evening and I’d punch out, and then I would stay after because the night crew boss at the time, Ron, taught me how to stock shelves. Even though I was off the clock, I would stay and help the night crew for four hours or as long as I could. In today’s environment you’re no longer allowed to do that, but Ron would show me how to cut cases and throw stock. I remember many, many nights at around 11 o’clock, my dad would come up to the store and he’d be banging on the front window because the store was closed, yelling, “hey, it’s time to go home. You need to get to bed, you’ve got school tomorrow.” And that would happen a lot, four nights a week when it wasn’t football season. I would just stay and work on my own just to learn how to work night crew because I really enjoyed the business. So, I was a marginal student and I knew my parents couldn’t pay for college. My older brothers, Tom and Bob, didn’t go to college. But then Ken had saved enough money at Fazio’s, and along with some football scholarship money, he was able to attend Oberlin College.

Objectivity makes Hirz ‘very effective’

Ed Wong, EVP and chief digital officer for Smart & Final, has been with the company just over three years. Prior to that, he was a global partner in IBM’s retail practice. Wong said he was recruited initially for IT and supply chain, and Smart & Final CEO Dave Hirz was part of that process.

“I joined in the middle of 2016…The area of focus definitely was in our information technology area to put together a plan to modernize the technologies that we were running our businesses by,” Wong said.

He said he found Hirz to be very objective and someone who relied upon his team’s expertise.

“I think Dave’s style of being very factual and being focused particularly on measurables tend to help—surfacing the critical discussion points in a very objective way so that we can find some common ground.”

Wong said as the world of grocery is changing in terms of the shopping habits of customers, the modernization of technology requires a lot of financial investment. He said Hirz’s ability to listen, to understand things in a very objective way and to rely on facts and measurables “make him very effective in supporting the right decisions for the company.”

On company culture, Wong said Hirz focuses the team on the company values.

“Our annual reviews are certainly based on achievement of those values and whether people demonstrate the behavior that’s aligned to those values, and we also do surveys within the organization,” he said. “Dave brought a lot of specifics as far as what are the key components of what’s important for Smart & Final. And then, along with that, there’s a consistent process of discussion and review to isolate where we may need further work on.”

Wong said the company has a program called “SpotLight,” which is an online recognition mechanism where employees are able to comment on not just their own team but those across the company in terms of observed behavior.

“People get put into the spotlight when they are observed doing good work, so it’s a good way of recognizing people when they demonstrate specific things that are aligned,” Wong said.

He said the culture of the company tends to be focused in two areas: the core values it wants its associates to demonstrate and live by, and the specific business objectives to go after.

“Those are certainly things that are, I would say, kind of baked into what Smart & Final is,” Wong said.

Ed Wong

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Ken is three years older than me; he just retired a couple years ago.

When I was a senior in high school, I was working for Fazio’s Markets, and John Fazio, the owner, bought a chain of stores in California that had just gone bankrupt, E.F. MacDonald, which operated Shopping Bag Food Stores. Fazio’s bought them in 1972, when I was a junior in high school. Since I knew I didn’t want to go to college, I got the name of the guy that ran the store operations in California from my brothers because he used to be a store operations guy in Cleveland, Vince Polimene. Early in my senior year, I wrote Vince a letter and said, “I’m going to graduate from high school in June 1973 and I’d like to move to California if you have a job for a clerk in the new company.”

Did somebody encourage you to do that?

No. My dad wanted me to go to college. I wanted to stay in the grocery business, and the thought of a new company in California where maybe there would be even more opportunities to be a store manager someday really appealed to me. Not to mention—California vs. Cleveland sounded pretty good to an 18-year-old.

Everybody wants to come to California.

Everybody wants to come to California when you live in Cleveland. I still have a copy of the letter that I handwrote, and then typed out to send to Vince back in 1973.

I had just worked my way up to clerk in my senior year. When I was 18, I graduated from high school. My parents were so upset, they couldn’t believe I was leaving. But three days after I graduated, I moved to California to be a grocery clerk for Fazio’s Markets. I lived in a little apartment I found in La Habra.

I started as a clerk for Fazio’s but worked my way up pretty quickly. I worked my way up to key carrier and assistant manager, and right before I turned 21, I was promoted to store manager. My first store was in La Palma, California, in 1976.

Were you aggressively looking to get promoted every chance you had?

No, I really wasn’t. I just knew that if I worked hard, at some point people would recognize it. Because that was the way it was in sports. You have to earn it. I think that’s

something else you learn in sports—if you do the best you can every day, you help to create your own opportunities.

When I was 23 (in 1978) we were bought by Albertsons. Fazio’s didn’t make it; they closed all the California stores. They still had stores in Ohio, so many executives moved back there; several others ended up going to Boys Markets, including Vince Polimene, who had hired me when I moved from Cleveland.

I was manager at the La Palma store at the time. The first week that Albertsons bought us, I had inventory, and it was about 6 in the morning when we finished the physical inventory process. John Carley walked in. I think he was SVP at the time. Ultimately, he became president, but at the time I believe he was SVP, working for the CEO, Warren McCain. When he walked in, I had no idea who he was. He was going around visiting stores, and the first thing he said when he looked at me—before he introduced himself—was “How old are you?” I said, “I’m 23.” He was very blunt: “We don’t have any 23-year-old store managers at Albertsons.” At Albertsons, it seemed that you had to be closer to 28 at the time. I didn’t know what to say, but I was naïve and stupid and said, “Well, you do now.”

I stayed with Albertsons. Vince Polimene would call me a couple times a year and ask me if I would to come to Boys Markets as a store manager and subsequently be a district manager. I always told him no. But in 1985, I left Albertsons and went to work for Boys Markets. I was a store manager with the promise that I would become a district manager within a couple of years, which I did.

You left Albertsons, a big chain, and went to work for Boys, which had 56 stores.

I thought there would be more opportunity. A lot of the people that I had worked with before had gone there. But also, I thought it might be a good time to make a change. Even though I lived in Orange County, I knew I’d end up working in the inner city, as that’s where most of our stores were. And I did. I spent five years in South Central L.A. But I thought it would be a new experience; I could learn things that I wasn’t learning today.

That was the same year I met my wife, Julie.

Was Julie in the business?

No, she worked for Dow Chemical. She had just been

transferred from Florida, and we met through a buddy of mine who worked with her.

I take it you have had mentors, people who impacted your career.

Oh, sure, a lot of people. I was a store manager for 13 years for different companies and you always have bosses that are really good or really bad, but regardless you learn a lot from both. I have had several mentors throughout my grocery career, but my first mentor was my first boss when I was a box boy, Tony Konzac.

When Hirz received the Legend of the Industry Award from the Food Industry Sales Managers’ Club of Los Angeles in 2018, he talked about Konzac: “Tony really seemed to ‘get’ that great opportunity that is represented every time you hire somebody new into the industry. He took the time to help me understand the real purpose behind what we do every day. We’ve all heard this is a people business; I heard that my first week on the job when I was 16 years old because it was important to tell me. And because he invested time in developing me, I was able to watch him demonstrate that every day. See, Tony had an incredible focus on customer relations. He knew most of the customers in our community, and in our store he would call our customers by name. And Tony always seemed interested in me and what turned out to be my career. Who would have known that when I was 16, but he was interested in my being invested in working for Fazio’s Market at the time. So those are two really important lessons I’ve carried with me throughout my career.”

My most influential mentor was Harold McIntire. Harold was the first president of Food 4 Less Supermarkets, when they started in the 1980s with one store. I had the pleasure of working under Harold for several years. He was very even-tempered and treated everyone with respect. He taught me an awful lot about teamwork, respect and the importance of building a strong team and the importance of putting family first. He was a real gentleman. Harold retired in 1999, and I was fortunate enough to be able to replace him in the president role.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Let’s pick back up with your career.

At Boys Markets, I was promoted to district manager in about 1988. We had about 56 stores and we got bought by Food 4 Less. Ron Burkle, at the time, only had three Food 4 Less stores, and I was really confused how some guy with three stores could buy our big company with 56 stores, but he did. Then our new company, Food 4 Less, bought Alpha Beta in 1991, Ralphs in 1995 and merged with Fred Meyer in 1997, then we were bought by Kroger in 1999. I went from Boys Markets to Food 4 Less to Alpha Beta to Ralphs to Fred Meyer to Kroger in the span of eight years without ever changing companies.

At the time the mergers began, I was a district manager but had transitioned to an operations services administration role. In this role, I had the opportunity to interface with the Food 4 Less warehouse stores, the Alpha Beta conventional stores and then ultimately with the Ralphs stores. In 1995, we ended up changing all the Boys and Alpha Beta locations to either Ralphs or Food 4 Less banners. The administrative role gave me an opportunity to play a part in the integration process as we tried to bring those different cultures together.

In 1994, at about the time that the company decided they were going to buy Ralphs, George Golleher, who at the time was CEO of the Alpha Beta-Food 4 Less company, promoted me to vice president of store operations administration.

When Food 4 Less and Ralphs merged in 1995, Kevin Davis (chairman of Bristol Farms) was running the sales and merchandising department for Ralphs, so we worked really close together on the integration teams until Kevin left in 1996 to go to Bristol Farms. Several of Ralphs key management left in 1996 and 1997 and were replaced by people that came from the Food 4 Less side of the company.

I’ve been through several mergers in my career, but the culture at Food 4 Less and the culture at Ralphs were unbelievably different. That was part of the reason that many of Ralphs’ executives left within a year. But I learned a lot in my relatively low-level VP of operations administration position, being involved in the integration process of the two companies. Really, for me it was fascinating. I probably learned more during the integration than any other time in my career. Ever since I was in that role, when I later became president of Food 4 Less and Ralphs and

A proud father of three

Dave Hirz has three children: son Christopher and daughters Makenzie and Taylor.

Chris and his wife, Alissa, have two children, Callie and Austin, who are 7 and 6 years old. They live in Claremont, California. Chris has always had a passion for baseball and today, is the general manager at a sports park for Big League Dreams in West Covina. Although Chris has lived his entire life in California, he is a huge Cleveland Indians fan.

Makenzie, 28, lives in Auckland, New Zealand. She works for the Auckland Council and for the past two years was involved in authorizing charitable grants to nonprofit organizations in New Zealand. Just this week she was promoted to a new position in the Aukland Council, where she will be in charge of their sustainability efforts and working with businesses in New Zealand to improve their sustainability practices. She also is treasurer of the Hirz Family Foundation, managing its charitable grants.

Taylor, 25, lives in Manhattan. She works for Praytell, a branding agency in Brooklyn. Her current accounts include Anheuser-Busch, Netflix and Spin Master. She has been in marketing and branding since her intern days at UCSD, and really enjoys the business. She has a great work ethic, just like her parents.

Dave wanted the girls to be able to take care of themselves, so when they were in junior high school, he encouraged them to enroll in martial arts classes. They agreed to take Taekwondo—but only if their father would take the classes, too. Makenzie had to drop out a few belts short of black due to demands from school and high school basketball, but Taylor and her dad completed several years of the program and earned their black belts.

Both Makenzie and Taylor played basketball at Foothill High School in Tustin, near their home in Santa Ana where Dave and Julie still live. They also played basketball in college. Makenzie went to NYU; Taylor, University of California-San Diego.

The Hirzes have lived in their home in Santa Ana, which Julie bought (without Dave seeing it) when she was pregnant with Taylor. Dave had a heavy travel schedule at the time for Boys Markets as it was being integrated with Alpha Beta, and she was tired of looking at homes and being outbid, so she just bought it.

From left: Alissa, Chris, Callie; Dave, Julie, Austin (in front of Julie), Makenzie and Taylor.

“Luckily, 25 years later, it has worked out pretty well,” Dave says.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

now Smart & Final, I’ve always kept that role on the organization chart. Today it’s called director of store operations services, and we’ve always tried to rotate that position every year to year-and-a-half, and we still do today. It was such a great learning experience for me, and a great way for high-potential store operations associates to accelerate their knowledge and development. Earlier this year we had a strong executive, Rick Morales, in that role. He just rotated out into a really important integration role, and a strong young district manager, Mike McLean, has moved into the position. In the store operations services role, you deal with everything: the IT department, when a system goes down and the store goes down; in distribution, when loads are late or a truck breaks down. Every department in the company interfaces with the store ops services role. It’s such a great opportunity to learn about all aspects of the company and then to go back out to be a district manager or progress to the next stage in your career.

This is a good segue into education…

I’m just a huge believer in education. I’ve been involved in WAFC (Western Association of Food Chains) because of the role it plays in helping people in our industry pursue a higher education. I have 10,000 employees (at Smart & Final) and I couldn’t tell you how many of them have college degrees, but it’s not the majority, by any stretch. But to be a CEO of a grocery company in another 10 years, you will probably need a college education. It just seems like things are always getting more competitive, so I’m just a huge believer in the value of education.

Kevin Davis and I were in the leadership chairs of the WAFC when the Retail Management Certificate Program (RMCP) was started. Obviously, Carole Christianson (COO of WAFC) was key to making the RMCP successful. Other board members of the WAFC at the time were also key to that evolution as well. Up until that time, and this was less than 15 years ago, the WAFC program primarily supported about 35 industry associates a year. It was all about the USC Food Industry Management (FIM) program, so for 50 or 60 years the WAFC was mostly about sending 35 or 40 students to USC.

Today, thousands of associates in our industry have benefited from the education they’ve received through the WAFC RMCP. I have about 250 of my associates attending junior college through the WAFC Retail Management Certificate Program just this semester. If my associates want to attend, I’ll pay for their tuition and books. Many of the companies who have team members going through the RMCP pay for tuition and books.

Several years ago, we even began paying for their tuition and books up front because what I found was that many of my associates couldn’t afford to buy the books even though they knew they’d be reimbursed when they graduated. We make sure they have no money out of pocket, and that has really helped to get more people to attend junior college.

It’s eight classes, and most of our associates say, “This is pretty cool. What I learn at night or online I can apply the next day.” Many of these students keep going to school and get their undergraduate degree. It’s more accessible than ever, because what’s

Hirz brought ‘dynamic environment’ to Smart & Final

Rick Phegley, EVP and CFO for Smart & Final, joined the company 20 years ago as the corporate treasurer and became CFO in 2001. He joined Smart & Final after several years in the oil and gas industry, working for Arco. He said his work involved some of Arco’s retail operations, such as its convenience stores. He said he came on board with Smart & Final as a financial career transition rather than a desire to join a grocery company.

Smart & Final was a public company when he first joined, then went to a private company in 2007 with Apollo Management as an equity partner, then later in 2012 to Ares Management as an equity partner. In 2019, the company was back with Apollo, having been public briefly, from 2014 through mid-2019.

Smart & Final, which is more than 140 years old now, has a unique culture, and Hirz, when he joined the company in 2010, “first understood the culture and understood the business and brought an approach as a student of the business.”

He said Hirz’s transition to the company was aided by the fact he spent a lot of time trying to understand the culture and the business “and where Smart & Final fits in the marketplace.”

Phegley said Hirz understands that he is not an expert in every discipline, but he really seeks to understand the disciplines and what is important in those disciplines. He said in the time Hirz has been at Smart & Final, “he has really delved deeply into trying to understand the finance function, particularly when we were a public company.”

Describing himself as someone who learns by working with the people around him, Phegley said Hirz came in with a different background than a traditional Smart & Final executive.

“Through exploring what he doesn’t know, we all learn,” Phegley said. “It’s a good environment, a dynamic environment to work with people who are interested in learning more about the business and particularly data-driven approaches to the business.”

Phegley said Smart & Final becoming private again should help it as the grocery industry goes through tremendous change.

“We are moving to more specialized marketing, customer segmentation, digital and online commerce, so being a private company gives us a more nimble platform to adapt to changes in the marketplace without the burden of quarterly reporting to public investors,” he said.

Rick Phegley

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

different today is that many of them are doing it online. I can’t say enough about education and how important I think it is. Cherie Phipps at WAFC has done an incredible job of taking this Retail Management Certificate program from zero to the entire western U.S.—and she is still expanding. She’s done a phenomenal job. I tell my associates all the time that education is something nobody can ever take away from you. In fact, Scott Drew, our EVP of Smart & Final Stores, just completed the eight-class RMCP. Talk about leading by example—he is a real leader!

Julie, who graduated from University of Illinois, encouraged me to start taking some classes. Most of my associate degree I achieved at Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College, both junior colleges here in Orange County. I started going to school at night, working during the day, in about 1988, when I was 33. It took four years to get my associate degree and then I transferred to Cal State Fullerton to finish my degree in another four years. So, it took me eight years altogether.

I was a good student. I wasn’t a 4.0, but I was probably a 3.5 in college. In high school, I was probably a 2.0. I really enjoyed attending college and appreciated it more as an adult than during my high school days. When I began attending, I was a store manager, and when I graduated in 1996, I was a group vice president. I was promoted four times during the eight years I attended school. I think there were two reasons for that.

Number one is everything I was learning in school I could come back the next day and apply to what I was doing in my job. For example, if I was taking a human resource class, I could come to work the next day and try what I had learned the night before. That really helped as I put my learnings into practice in real-time.

The other reason I believe I was being promoted is because my district manager and the leadership in my company looked at me differently, because I was going to school and trying to improve and develop myself. That is exactly what happens today with my associates that are working on their personal development or have already gone back to school to get their degree or even their post graduate degree. Our senior management team looks at these associates differently because they are taking, or have taken, the initiative to be better tomorrow than they are today. Matt Reeve, our group VP of sales and

merchandising, is going to school right now—a really intensive two-year program to get his master’s degree at USC. I look at him differently because of what he is willing to do and the sacrifices he is willing to make at home and work to be better tomorrow than he is today. And for me, through those eight years of going to school part-time, people looked at me differently. In fact, I believe that they gave me additional opportunities because I was going to

Three keys to success for

Dave Hirz

Hirz lists the three things he believes have contributed to his success in the grocery business:

1. People. “The people you work with are really the key to your success, and I have had the honor of working with really bright folks throughout my career and am blessed with an incredible team at Smart & Final.”

2. Education. “It’s so important and really helps develop essential critical thinking skills. If I hadn’t gone back to school, I wouldn’t be sitting here today, there’s no doubt in my mind. This is something I’m so passionate about that at Smart & Final, we’ve made it very easy for our associates to enroll in the Retail Management Certificate program, by paying tuition upfront for all eight of the RMCP courses.”

3. Family. “My wife, Julie, has been absolutely incredible. In fact, she’s the one who encouraged me to return to school. So, if I didn’t have her support, or that of my daughters Makenzie and Taylor and my son Christopher when they were growing up, none of this would be possible. When I was a manager and going to school, I worked six days a week. You can’t do that unless you have incredible support at home.”

“So, for me, any success I have achieved is because of the people I’ve been blessed with surrounding me in my career, my education and my family’s support.”

school. And back then it was less common to be attending college while working in our industry. I owe an awful lot to the fact that Julie really encouraged me go back to school. It’s not easy, but it is definitely worth the time and effort.

Julie: It was hard. We had three young kids and I was working full-time. We are active in our church, we’ve got stuff going on, and every weekend he had homework or a group study or some other thing that he would have to be away. That’s why when we mentor kids we tell them there are a lot of ways to do this, but the easiest way is just go to college right out of high school.

Your church plays a big role in your life?

Dave: Sure. I grew up Catholic. I was baptized, I made my first communion, and I attended Catholic grade school for eight years. In Catholic school back then you went to church almost every day. In high school, I went to public school. When Julie and I dated and then got married, her faith was much stronger than mine and she was a member of a Presbyterian church, so I began attending there with her. We were married at Irvine Presbyterian, where we served as deacons and attended for 25 years. Today, religion continues to play a big role in our lives. It’s really an important part of what I do. I’m in a small group Bible study with about 16 great guys here in Tustin. Julie and I attend church at Trinity Presbyterian and more recently Mariners in Irvine. We go to church every Sunday unless we are traveling—and then often we’ll stream it on video.

Every Tuesday night my small group meets for an hour and a half or so, and we go through the Bible. Right now, we are going through the Book of John, but it’s always something different and I enjoy it a lot. It’s a big part of my life. In fact, I have a ritual I’ve had now for several years, that every morning, unless I’m traveling or unless something is going on, I’m in my office around 6:30 and every morning I spend some time in prayer before I begin my day.

I may have mentioned that I love to read. One of my favorite books is Charles Colson’s “How Now Shall We Live?” It really speaks to what a miracle our world is. For Christmas, I gave Julie, Christopher, Makenzie and Taylor each a copy. I went through all four of the books and highlighted the key sections that really resonated and are important to me.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

You’re a morning person?

I’ve always been an up-at-5 a.m. kind of guy because you get so much more done before 8 a.m.—before you have people come in to the office, and the phones start ringing. I’ll make a list every morning first thing of what I want to get done today, and then the day starts and stuff happens. Some days I’ll sit down at my desk at 5:30 or 6 in the evening and I haven’t gotten anything on my list done! Once the day starts you can lose control of your time because meetings last longer than planned, people need decisions or need your signature, you have non-stop reading and emails…every day is different, which is one of the things that makes this business so fun. So, I always make a list of things I want to get done at the start of my day, while I am the most focused.

You are in phenomenal shape, so somewhere along those hours you are putting in some gym time.

Staying in shape for me is really important. Staying in shape and eating right keeps you healthy. I have been fortunate to have good health. I haven’t missed a day of work in the 48 years I’ve been working. Also, working out clears my mind and helps me think. So, I get to the gym on a regular basis, but not as much as I would like. I’d like to be there every day. I get to the gym two to three days a week fairly religiously.

I came to Smart & Final in 2010. In 2012, we built a gym, and it’s open to anyone that works at the office. We charge $10 a month for towels, soap, gym equipment and maintenance. I am pleased that a lot of our associates at the office use the gym, and it works out well.

When do you carve out that time to work out?

It is always difficult to find time, but you have to make time. Fortunately, I have a terrific assistant, Denine, who really keeps me organized. I would never be able to keep up with my schedule without her support. She even puts my workouts on my calendar to be sure I make time. I normally work out twice during the week—strength and cardio—and then get in at least one day of cardio on the weekend. I also try to get in a yoga class a couple times a month.

Talk to me about your charitable foundation and its importance to you.

For us, the Smart & Final Charitable Foundation is really important. It supports grassroot charitable organizations in almost every city that we serve. Last year, we donated about $2 million in charitable grants. It’s really a great foundation.

Matt (Reeve) is a big supporter of the charitable works that we do in the foundation. The biggest fundraiser for the foundation is the Smart & Final golf tournament. Historically, it has raised about $300,000 in one day. Matt took it over two years ago, changed the venue and took it up a couple notches. He and his team have the kind of relationships with their vendors that they were able to get them on board to help support at a higher level. It has increased the funding for the charitable foundation by about 70 percent over what it used to generate, so

‘Always to be priced right’ is Hirz’s mantra

Don Butterfield, VP of non-perishables, already was working at Smart & Final when Dave Hirz was hired as president. Butterfield, who has been with the company for 13 years and is responsible for the center store, said Hirz had a different management approach.

“He was very in tune,” Butterfield said. “He looked at very specific items. He would actually go to stores and question you on specific items. He would call you up and ask you on specific retails. Most CEOs probably don’t know the retails of items as well as Dave does.”

Category managers report to Butterfield and together they determine what center store items to carry, the placement of items on the shelf, the retails they charge and the items that are featured on the weekly ad.

“We also have budgeted metrics we have to hit, so our team looks at their metrics daily,” he said. “We get daily reports of sales and profit, and we take those pretty seriously.”

He said Hirz would go into a store and “ask why we price this retail on cheese, and he would quote other retailers—their retail on cheese—and this was before we had any of the technology to instantly have it, but he would know it.”

Butterfield said Hirz’s mantra is “always to be priced right” so he didn’t care what it cost, he wanted to make sure products are priced competitively and that Smart & Final is a true low-price leader.

Butterfield said company culture is very important to Hirz. He came up with the company’s values and policies and he determines its vision.

He also encourages his team to try new things. Butterfield said every year company executives are tasked with planning out a new set of initiatives—different ideas to try to grow the business.

“Sometimes ideas work and sometimes they don’t, but he definitely pushes you to try new things, because that’s the only way you are going to grow as a company.”

Butterfield said Hirz has pushed him to grow in many ways, one of which is serving on a committee for City of Hope. Not only does it help him become more comfortable speaking in front of groups, but it also gives exposure to the company.

As far as Hirz’s management style, Butterfield said he believes the No. 1 thing is attention to detail.

In addition, “he is a people person,” Butterfield said. “He is big with philanthropy, and he encourages all of us to go out and to donate our time and donate to all these different charitable foundations. He’s also big with the CGA, the WAFC. He’s really a great leader.”

Don Butterfield

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Matt’s done a great job.

I’m a huge fan of City of Hope (cancer research and treatment center). We know so many people that have been helped by the City of Hope in just the last few years— Kassandra Acedo, Kevin Davis, Jerry Whitmore, Bob Paul… the list goes on and on. The City of Hope does great work.

The Hirz Family Foundation is something that Julie and I started a few years ago, and we are pretty excited about it. We are still in the early stages. Our daughters Makenzie and Taylor are both involved in our foundation. Makenzie is the treasurer and Taylor is the secretary. We’ve funded the foundation ourselves and our goal every year is to give away 5 percent of the total balance of the foundation’s assets.

Our Hirz Family Foundation also supports the Illuminators, CGA, City of Hope and Olive Crest, but we try to support much smaller organizations that don’t get the kind of funding that maybe some of those larger organizations do. Julie just last night at dinner talked to me about a project she wants to undertake that we haven’t fleshed out yet, but it’s in Rwanda.

I’m also part of the 5 Boroughs Book Club (a local men’s ministry group) that we formed about four years ago. It has nothing to do with books, but it’s a cool name. We meet about once a month, it’s about 80 guys, mostly from the Tustin area, and it’s all about community service. A good friend of mine, Kurt James, had the idea and runs the club. It’s based on friendship, faith and fellowship; it really is all about what we can do to help in our community. We’ve put together an annual golf tournament. We are getting ready to have our third one to support Hillview, an alternative high school that’s just a few miles from here. If you get kicked out of other high schools, many times you will end up at Hillview. These kids really need role models, mentors, counselors, and we have gotten very involved in that school. We have thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and scholarships to help; a lot of these kids are getting to go to college that never thought they would, and most are the first in their family to attend college. The 5 Boroughs Book Club is all about community involvement and what we can do to make Santa Ana and Tustin better.

You spend time with other industry executives outside the office (and stores). How does that help you?

There are so many great people in our industry,

including Legends, that I am fortunate to call friends, like Jerry Whitmore, Bob Paul, Don Ropele and more. Their friendships have made me a better person.

I’ll tell you, even in casual conversations with people like Kevin (Davis), Oscar (Gonzalez), Bob (Kelly) and John (White), I learn an awful lot. They are all four so smart and so good at what they do.

Kevin and Oscar run totally different companies— and both of their store formats are different than mine. Kevin’s with Bristol Farms, which is an incredible high-end specialty retailer with fantastic stores, and then Oscar runs a chain of really great Hispanic stores with incredible service departments. At Smart & Final, I’m kind of in the middle, in the value niche.

Both Kevin and Oscar are so smart and the nicest guys in the world. I learn a lot about their management styles, their associate relations and their philosophy on how they treat people and build teams. Both of them are so similar in that they are so good with their associates, and they realize that they can’t be successful without their people. They both have a lot in common and they have been great mentors for me.

Bob is now starting his own egg company after a lot of years with Hidden Villa, and John is in sales with Dean

Foods. All four of these guys, along with their wives, are very good friends of ours. The last several years Bob, John, Kevin, Oscar and I have taken an annual fishing trip to Alaska for a week in May. The salmon and halibut fishing is terrific, but you learn an awful lot about guys when you spend six days, living, eating and sleeping on a boat. And I have learned that all four of these guys are incredible individuals that I am fortunate to spend time with.

I think we learn a lot from each other. We don’t talk about the price of groceries—it’s not about running the business–it’s mostly philosophical, where the industry is going and how we are evolving.

But 80 percent of the talk is about family and stuff other than the grocery business. They are all four incredible family men with great spouses and wonderful kids.

That leads me into your hobbies, like sailing and biking. Kevin came up here to Tustin and started taking a spin class with me several years back. Things evolved from there…There’s a ride that originated from the guy that runs the spin class called Breathless Agony. It starts in Redlands, goes 100 miles, almost all uphill, and ends at Onyx Summit, near Big Bear—11,000 feet of climb. Kevin, John White and I took that ride together for the first time more than a dozen years ago, and then we just started doing these 100-mile bike rides, called “centuries,” and we’ve done up to five or six a year.

Also, I really enjoy reading—I read at least 12-15 books a year, and I love to sail, mostly sailboats that are around 40 feet long. Julie and I are actually taking a 45-foot catamaran to Catalina Island for three days next weekend with our good friends Claude and Melinda. I also have my pilot’s license, but Julie feels much more secure when I am on the water, sailing.

Let’s talk about how you got to Smart & Final.

I was with Kroger for 11 years. I mentioned that I became president of Food 4 Less in 1999, when I was 44. It was that same year that Kroger bought Ralphs and Food 4 Less. I was president of Food 4 Less for eight years and Ralphs for three years. In 2010, a recruiter called me to try to get me to leave Ralphs/Food 4 Less and come over to Smart & Final because George Golleher, the CEO at the time, was going to retire. I told them no.

On the annual fishing trip: Hirz with Kevin Davis and Bob Kelly.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

But finally, what changed my mind was that to be a CEO or to be more than a division president with Kroger—there were 19 division presidents—you had to move to Cincinnati. Kroger asked me twice to move back to Cincinnati to take a bigger role. I came home and talked to Julie, Makenzie and Taylor, and both times they were really supportive. They said they hoped I could come back and visit them once in a while and send my paycheck, but they weren’t going to Cincinnati. And I had to agree. I’ve seen what can happen when you uproot kids, especially in high school—it can go south—and the girls and Julie had no interest in moving, so I decided I wasn’t going to

Cincinnati.

By 2009, I thought if I want to be a CEO and not a division president and not move, there is a limited set of opportunities. So, in April of 2010, I made the move to Smart & Final and became CEO in early 2012. In 2012, we sold the company from Apollo to Ares (Management Corp.), another private equity company, and that’s when we really started to open stores and grow. In 2014, with this momentum starting, we took it public on the New York Stock Exchange.

We opened about 90 new stores in five years. We completed the Haggen acquisition—those 33 stores out of bankruptcy court—and had a great run of growing the

company from about 230 stores to around 320.

The world really changed for the industry and for me on June 16, 2017, when Amazon bought Whole Foods. That day, my stock as well as Kroger’s and others, dropped 30-40 percent in one day. And it subsequently continued to fluctuate wildly. The world changed because analysts and people thought that Amazon was going to take over the grocery industry. Our stock dove and never really recovered. So, in 2018, it became clear that the grocery industry was out of favor, and we felt that the market wasn’t valuing grocery stocks correctly.

So, we hired banks and began the process of selling the company, taking it private again. We sold from Ares back to Apollo. Apollo is the private equity company that owned Smart & Final back in 2010, when I was recruited. They believed, as we did, that the company was undervalued by the public markets. It’s such a great company. You’ve got two very unique banners—Smart Foodservice, which as we mentioned in our last public company earnings call, does about $1 billion a year, and Smart & Final, which does almost $4 billion.

Our company is very successful and very unique. At Smart & Final, a large percent of our volume comes from small businesses, clubs and organizations. It’s just a really unique format that we operate. So, the deal closed about 30 days ago and it’s going very well. Our new private equity owners are great partners, and I think they will be really good for the company.

One of the things I want to talk about is the culture that you brought into the company. When you started with Smart & Final it seemed like a different company— everybody walking differently, talking differently. And now there is Smart & Final Extra!, a store that is different than previous stores. Talk to me a little bit about that. When you accepted this job, did you have a vision of what it is today?

When they first asked me to come over, I thought about it for a long time. I went out and visited a lot of stores and didn’t really understand the banner. It’s so different. There are so many unique items. Even though I’d been in the grocery business since I was 16, I didn’t quite understand it because there were so many items I didn’t understand— the club size variety and the unique business customer

This group rode 235 miles along the Pacific Coast from Monterey to Santa Barbara in 2016. From left: Bob Kelly, Karl Schroeder, Kevin Davis, Pete Hejny, Don Ropele, Michele Markus and Dave Hirz.

items. Smart & Final carries more club size items than anybody else in the U.S. And on the business side, I didn’t quite understand the foodservice items.

By the time I made the decision, I thought I understood it, but I’ve learned so much from my team since I came over here. Today, I have a 10-person Senior Leadership Team (SLT) that all do an incredible job in their own specific areas—and importantly, working with me to set and execute the company strategy.

The culture at Smart & Final is really cool. It’s very unique. It’s been around for 148 years. I didn’t create the culture, but it’s a great culture, and I think part of it is because of the way the stores are structured. I was in a store today talking to a young lady that was working floral and I said, “Wow, floral looks great! Are you in charge of the department?” She said, “Yes, I’m in charge of floral, but I also work the bulk foods department. When we are busy, I go up and I check, and once in a while, the frozen guy comes by and needs help in frozen.” She was so proud!

The culture in Smart & Final is really all about teamwork. In some environments, if a checker is up front checking and it’s slow, she’s not allowed to go work baby food or face up the potato chips. Or if you are in a different culture and you work the cereal section, you are not allowed to work the detergent section. If you are a grocery clerk, you can’t work non-foods.

When I first went to Smart & Final, one of the first things I wanted to do was to find out what the culture was all about. So, within the first year, I went off-site with my director of training and development, and we held 16 meetings. These meetings were really her idea—Barb Van Dine—and I am so glad I listened to her. We held meetings with store managers, cashiers, checkers, courtesy clerks, warehouse workers, truck drivers. We also had three meetings in our office, and at every meeting we did the same thing. We began with a piece of paper that had 50

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Prioritizing communication

In addition to weekly team meetings and status updates, Hirz goes out to lunch once per quarter with each of his eight direct reports to foster open communication.

He also strives to schedule all of his meetings on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays to leave the ends of the week open for visiting stores.

“In fact, I encourage all of my executives, especially my merchandising and store operations teams, to do the same to ensure that we keep a pulse on how our customers and associates are feeling and to ensure that we continue meeting their needs. Of course, maintaining this schedule is always easier said than done.

“In fact, I spent today in stores with Sean Mahony, our group vice president of store operations. We started in Santa Ana and visited several other stores throughout the day. It is really fun, and I always learn a lot from our great store associates,” Hirz said. “They take so much pride in the work they do to create great experiences for their customers.”

values written on it. Fifty different generic values—love, faith, hope, respect, dignity, etc.—and in every meeting we handled it the exact same way. We gave everybody a list of 50 in all 16 meetings and said cross out 20 that you think aren’t as important. Then we had them cross off 10 more. Then they were down to 20. At that point, we asked them to pick the 10 of the 20 that they thought were the most important. Then they had to pick the five they thought were the most important values that they either saw today at Smart & Final or they aspired to see at Smart & Final. That’s how we defined what today we call our core values. But in all 16 groups, there’s only one core value that came up in every single group as a top five value, and it was teamwork. I was so surprised, and it really is not a culture I brought to the company; it’s a culture they’ve had for over 140 years.

I did a similar process at previous companies, and teamwork never even showed up on the radar.

So, our values today are teamwork, integrity, growth, respect and accountability. Those five were, by far, the top five in every group—and I am so proud of our associates

today, as they live these values every day.

Julie: At the annual awards party, it’s amazing the tenure these great associates have. It’s just crazy that when they recognize the 25, 30, 40 and 50 years of service, and then you learn about the multiple generations of Smart & Final associates in many of the families.

It’s such a unique culture. Julie and I host the awards dinner every year; we started the tradition eight years ago. Last year we had 800 people there. We award Cashier of the Year (the top 12 are recognized), Perishable Clerk of the Year, Customer Service Associate, Truck Driver, Warehouse Associate, Store Support Center and Volunteer of the Year. As Julie mentioned, we also honor years of service in fiveyear increments, from 15 to 50 years of service. It’s a great event.

My success over the past 10 years has really been due to the more than 10,000 great, dedicated associates at Smart & Final—they take so much pride in what they do. I am truly blessed to be part of their team. In particular, our

SMART & FINAL EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

Hirz’s leadership is a ‘breath of fresh air’

Jeff Whynot, SVP of human resources, started with Smart & Final in 2000, so he was established in the company when Dave Hirz was hired.

When Hirz first joined Smart & Final, Whynot said he brought clarity of thinking and objective—and quick— decision-making skills. Previous management had difficulty making hard decisions, but Hirz brought with him a “nice, clear, smart decision-making process.”

He said as an HR professional, Hirz was “a breath of fresh air” because he’s “passionate about a lot of HR programs.”

Whynot said he actually wrote several notes about the things that impressed him when Hirz joined the company. Whereas the company had been cutting some HR expenses, Hirz immediately noticed and started investing in people.

Hirz also zeroed in on a poster on the wall listing the company’s values, asking where they came from. Whynot said the marketing department had come up with them, and Hirz asked if anybody knew what they were. When Whynot replied he didn’t think so, Hirz’s reply was “let’s find out our values.”

“He grabbed Barb Van Dine, who was our VP of talent development, and they coordinated a bunch of meetings,” Whynot said. “They went out and met with truck drivers. They met with order selectors, store managers, the folks that were in the support center and in stores, all kind of different regions. It was an interesting thing they did. They gave them about 50 values, and they said cut them in half and keep cutting them in half until they got to the top five. And they said now tell us why. So, Dave just listened as our associates told him we picked these five values and here’s why they are really important to us.”

Whynot said Hirz was surprised by the values chosen by the associates and that they may not have been ones he would have picked.

“But when he heard the passion that the associates had behind them, he got it,” Whynot said.

One of the big ones was teamwork, which Whynot said he believed had to do with the company’s small box stores.

“Everybody pitches in to help each other in the stores and that translated to the corporate office,” he said.

Integrity and respect were other values that came up in almost every meeting, Whynot said. The one that surprised Hirz was growth, which he took to mean company growth.

“As he listened to them, he realized it was also about personal professional growth, so they connected their career to the company,” Whynot said. “As the company did well, then they would do well, so growth was really important to them. That’s probably one Dave would tell you he wouldn’t have picked as a value, but it became really clear that’s really important to our associates.”

After establishing four values, Whynot said Hirz added one: accountability. He said one of the observations made after Hirz came on board was that several team members didn’t know how to give associates constructive criticism, and they weren’t stepping

up and driving change but just accepting the status quo.

He said Hirz brought in the book “The Oz Principle,” which is about taking personal ownership, how to get feedback and how to ask for feedback. Everyone who was in a leadership position was put through that program and they really focused on driving accountability as the fifth value.

“And he did that within the first six months on board,” Whynot said of Hirz. “It was really impressive.”

Another thing Hirz did was step up the amount of recognition and appreciation the company showed to its associates.

“We came up with a whole awards program that was a lot of money to put up, and it didn’t bother him one bit to spend that kind of money and to recognize store associates. We continue it today; it’s a big program,” Whynot said.

In addition to the awards program, the company started SpotLight, a social media recognition program within Smart & Final that allows associates to recognize each other for various reasons. Points are awarded for recognition and build up over time to where the associate can redeem them and purchase goods online.

Hirz also believes in investing in associates and brought in several outside programs that have been running for six years now, Whynot said.

“He really stepped up our involvement in all those USC programs,” Whynot said. “We’ve been sending more people…To get more participation, Dave approved paying for books and tuition in advance. Basically, it eliminates any excuses…We bring all the graduates to the awards program and put them up on stage. It’s a way to get the message out that this is really important to us.”

Whynot said Smart & Final has given more than $1 million through its education foundation in scholarships to associates and their dependents.

Whynot has a bachelor’s degree in organizational development, which is the psychology of groups, focused specifically inside companies. He said to be really effective, “you need a CEO who is driving it. Having Dave come in, it was easy for me to sync up with him because I already had the background and understood what he wanted,” Whynot said, adding they were able to build both recognition and engagement programs.

“It’s very difficult if you have a CEO that doesn’t believe in that stuff to be successful, and it’s very easy when you have a CEO who really is driving it and pushing it,” he said.

Whynot said Hirz has an open-door policy and, as a matter of fact, gets a lot of business done in hallways and as he is walking around the office. He said while they have meetings, it’s not as many as he has had working for other companies and, most of the time, it’s more a case of informal discussions.

In addition to his people strengths, Whynot said another of Hirz’s strengths is driving for results.

“He has high expectations for himself and his team and always is establishing stretch goals for everyone,” Whynot said. “The other thing he does is he’s very analytical. When faced with a challenge, Dave quickly uses his analytical skills to kind of dig down deep into the issue and try to get to the root cause and figure out what we need to do. Those other two things, the result orientation and that analytical ability, I think, are some of the reasons he’s been successful, besides his strong people skills.”

Jeff Whynot

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

320 store managers—in both banners—are the ones that really make our stores, and our team, successful. We have the best managers in the industry.

You went to Cornell to do your FIM (Food Industry Management) program?

They have their own program that used to be a twoweek program that I was fortunate to attend in the 1990s. In fact, Ed McLaughlin, who runs the program, asked me to come back this year to speak with the class. I was back there last week for the first time in 25 years and was able to participate on an executive panel with a few other terrific executives, including Leslie Sarasin, the CEO of FMI, and Jim Coyne, president of Nestle. It was great to be back and interact with the students. One of our great SLT members attended this year—Joe VanDette, our group VP of marketing.

What do you see happening in the next few years; what’s the next big thing?

We are brand new into the private company environment, and I forgot how good it is. I think it’s really going to be beneficial for the company. You know, my cost savings going from public to private—the compliance, the auditing, etc.—were in the millions of dollars. Not to mention the advantage of no longer having to hold quarterly earnings calls with the public company analysts.

It’s just so hard and so expensive to be a public company and then the pressures of every period, being concerned about missing your numbers by a penny when you should be making longer term decisions. But when you are always trying to manage analysts’ expectations—who are primarily focused on this quarter’s results—it can have a negative impact on your business. It’s much healthier for Smart & Final to be a private company and for the team to focus on long-term growth and results.

What I like most about being a private company is that you can be focused on what’s best for the long-term health of the company and your associates.

I love our two-banner concept. Smart Foodservice is a grocery store for restaurants. It’s just so unique. There’s nothing like it in the U.S. And in the Smart & Final banner, nobody carries more club size products than we do. Of our almost $4 billion in sales, a large percent of it is done with

small businesses, clubs and organization—things that I sell that none of my competitors sell. It really allows us to have an incredibly stable platform differentiated from conventional grocery.

A big part of the future of the company is to continue to open a whole bunch of Smart Foodservice stores. These are terrific stores, very highly productive. The meat case is a walk-in meat cooler, produce is a walk-in produce cooler, and our average customer purchase is about five times that of a grocery store. You buy full cases of meat, full cases of produce. The goal there is to open four or five stores a year and to grow that banner. It’s an incredible banner run by a strong president, Derek Jones, a key member of our SLT, and he is supported by a really dedicated and focused team based out of Portland, Oregon.

The Smart & Final banner has an incredible future. I am so glad we are not just a grocery company. I would be nervous today if I was a grocery company with no points of differentiation, because it is very difficult to compete with the big guys if you are just a grocery company with no differentiation strategy.

At Smart & Final, part of our strategy is to continue to play to our strengths. Business customers, the club size customer, private label growth and now digital. The average conventional store’s private label penetration is around 22 percent; ours is over 28 percent, which really speaks to how loyal our customers are. They love our private label, and growing it is another key initiative.

It’s fun. It’s going to be a fun few years coming up.

Veg-Land Sales Representing

Congratulations Dave

The Smart & Final Charitable Foundation hosted an ice cream social for the pediatric patients and families of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in 2017.

has great attention to detail

Joseph “Joe” VanDette, group VP of marketing at Smart & Final, joined the company in September 2014. His job entails overseeing marketing, analytics, insights, CRM and, for a while, e-commerce. He came to the company after 10 years with Toys ‘R’ Us.

VanDette said he was excited to work for someone like Smart & Final CEO Dave Hirz.

“In my past, I had always worked in organizations that were predominantly merchandise or marketing forward; that’s usually where the leaders had come from,” he said. “To work for someone who had such a long history, particularly in operations, was of great excitement to me just because there’s a level of detail and relentless execution there that I was excited to be a part of.”

Calling himself a “bit of a detail nerd,” VanDette said he really likes Hirz’s attention to detail.

“Every little bit counts and when you add everything together you usually end up with something greater than the sum of its parts,” he said.

VanDette drives the daily and weekly marketing activities, including TV, radio and print ads and the email program. He also spends much of his time looking at customer insights and analytics to drive overall customer focus.

“That’s one of our big initiatives,” he said.

VanDette said Hirz lets his executives run their own teams and there’s “a lot of consensus derived in his meetings.”

“We’re usually working toward the same things, and it’s not as siloed as organizations I’ve been in in the past,” he said.

Hirz’s executive team is made up of those with a background in the grocery industry and those who come from outside the industry. VanDette said adding those from outside the industry allows a different perspective.

“We’re still within retail but not necessarily grocery,” he said. “I think it’s a good mix.”

Hirz is known for dropping by the offices of his team members or talking in the hallways, as opposed to always conducting business in meetings. VanDette said he has spent most of his time on the fourth floor, where Hirz’s office is located, but now he’s on the first floor.

The move came when Hirz looked at the building and decided to bring the work space into a more modern era, VanDette said.

“My team is the trial run, where we have an open concept space on the first floor,” he said. “Although I miss out on his visits, I am essentially trialing a new work style for the company and for him. It really requires me to do my own laps of the fourth floor more often so that I can pop into his office.”

Since joining Smart & Final, VanDette said he has been through the USC Food Industry Executive Program and was part of a smaller group from the company that attended a special two-week program at USC. This summer, VanDette said Hirz sent him to Cornell University in New York to attend its Food Industry Management Program. Hirz was on a panel of industry executives during the program.

“I can see the reaction he elicits in others at industry events. They think very highly of him, and I do as well.”

‘Hirz

Joe VanDette

Hirz honing his deli skills.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Hirz is ‘great leader, mentor’

Matt Reeve, group VP of sales and merchandising, started with Smart & Final in 2004 and was part of the small group that helped create the Extra! store concept under former company leader George Golleher.

When Dave Hirz joined the company, “He helped us to incubate ideas. He came with so much experience of his own, through his own history, and he’s able to diffuse a lot of that experience into what we’re doing at Smart & Final.”

Reeve said Hirz gives his team room to “try things and not succeed and change them, or just try things and succeed. I think we’ve had a lot more wins than not-wins.”

Reeve said Hirz likes to “get all the troops rallied” and often will come to his office, sit down and talk about what’s going on or an idea he wants to share. Hirz likes to make sure his team can come to a consensus on issues.

“It’s quite a bit different than any other president or CEO that I’ve ever worked for,” Reeve said.

Not only has Hirz made an impression with his business acumen and leadership style, but also the fact that he cares about those he works with. Reeve said Hirz knows his kids’ names, his wife’s name and “will absolutely pick them out of a crowd.”

“Even if we’re at a busy event like a WAFC function, he’ll make it a point to go over and talk to my wife and say hi to my kids and give them a big hug,” Reeve said. “He really does make an effort to get to know the family and you know what, that’s the kind of guy he is. He is family oriented.”

When told that Hirz wanted to be sure his leadership team was spotlighted in his Food Industry Hall of Fame induction story, Reeve said, “That’s just like Dave. He’s a pretty humble guy.

“He has been extraordinarily influential to my time here at Smart & Final and to Smart & Final as a company. He came and brought a lot of ideas that fundamentally changed our company. For him to say that it’s all about his staff, that just shows part of his character.”

Reeve said the success of Smart & Final also is due to the entire team.

“I feel incredibly privileged to work here at Smart & Final with such a great group of people,” Reeve said. “…Everybody puts in so much effort to try to make us successful…It’s really the whole family at Smart & Final.”

Reeve, who is in an executive MBA program at USC, said Hirz has been very supportive of his efforts at continuing his education. He said he has been fortunate to work with a leader of Hirz’s caliber.

“He really is a great leader,” Reeve said. “He’s someone who has been a mentor to me and someone that I look up to, for sure.”

Matt Reeve

Olive Crest honored Hirz and Smart & Final in 2014 for supporting its mission of helping at-risk children and teens.

SMART & FINAL EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT

Hirz is ‘extremely demanding’ but has a softer side

Scott Drew, EVP of administration, joined Smart & Final in 2010, just two weeks before Dave Hirz came on board.

“I have two weeks’ seniority over Dave,” he said. “I remind him of that all the time.”

Drew oversees construction, all store operations, loss prevention, sales and merchandising, supply chain “and a few other things.”

He had worked with Hirz previously at Ralphs, where he was a district manager and Hirz was president. Drew said Hirz helped him prepare for the interview process when being considered for a promotion.

“That helped launch my career and start me off on the vice president path,” Drew said.

Their paths crossed again when they both began working for Smart & Final. Drew discovered Hirz had been talking to CEO George Golleher about bringing him on board even before Hirz had been hired.

“He already had a vision before he was even gainfully employed here in terms of building his team…There’s no doubt in my mind he had a strategy, and he was following in the footsteps of George, who is a brilliant grocer…Dave came in and picked up that ball and just enhanced George’s vision and really took Smart & Final to the next level,” Drew said.

When both men joined Smart & Final, it was privately held by Apollo Management. It then was sold to Ares Management, then to a publicly traded company where Ares remained the controlling partner. Drew said when the company became public, Hirz took his leadership team to New York to the New York Stock Exchange, where they stood on the balcony and rang the bell.

“There’s not many people who can say that they have had that experience, and that’s something Dave gave all of us the opportunity to do,” Drew said.

In June of 2019, Apollo again acquired Smart & Final and the company became private again. Drew said while management style had to be adjusted, Hirz stayed “even keel.”

“We are still in the grocery business; we still need to stay focused on driving sales and profitability,” he said. “We went from being a growth company, saying we are going to grow the stores by 10 percent on an annualized basis, to now the word growth goes in a different direction. We are going to grow and mature the stores that we have, and that’s the vision that Dave has painted for the organization. Our 2020 vision.”

Drew said although they are not opening new stores, they still have the core nucleus of 257 stores that they can grow and make better.

“That’s really our vision for 2019 and going forward,” he said. “Let’s do a really nice job on the stores that we do have and take care of the 10,000 associates that are out there.”

Drew describes Hirz as extremely demanding.

“He has high expectations of his team,” Drew said. “He wants them to perform, wants them to deliver. But there is a softer, gentler side of Dave in that he is a people person. He cares about his team.”

Drew said while Hirz is not easy to get to know, “once you crack the case, what’s underneath there is an amazing human being.”

He said Hirz has “an amazing work/life balance,” and whenever he’s not at work, Hirz is living life to the fullest. He also gives back to the communities that he serves.

“He really lives that value,” Drew said. “He encourages all of us to get involved. I currently sit on boards for Olive Crest, WAFC, City of Hope; I didn’t do any of that in my past, and Dave is the one that created that vision and pushed. He encourages everyone to get involved and make a difference. I sit on our charitable committee board with Dave, and he’s all about giving back. I admire that about him.”

Scott Drew

Smart & Final team members donate time and money to the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Sean Mahony, group VP for operations, has been with Smart & Final for 26 years, starting on the night crew stocking shelves at 19. He worked his way up to store manager, district manager, VP and regional VP before assuming his current role.

Mahony said while he believes the company culture has always been the same, Hirz helped define Smart & Final’s core values.

“When Dave joined the organization, one of the first things he did was hold meetings with the warehouse team, store associates, management, and really helped us to define what our core values are. They were really there all along, throughout many changes in the organization… Dave did a great job of really bringing that out of us, ultimately being something that we’re proud of at Smart & Final.”

He said the company has evolved greatly during his time there. When he first started, he said the stores looked a lot like the Smart Foodservice stores do today; the Extra! format was developed a little over 10 years ago.

“Even with Extra!, we are continuing to develop the brand and develop the offering, and why we exist,” Mahony said. “To see what we’ve evolved to today, it’s definitely a different consumer experience.”

He said former CEO George Golleher laid the foundation and Hirz built on it.

“Dave really had a great vision of what we could be and what we were missing—what was important to consumers,” Mahony said. “Dave’s always had a good balance in making sure we preserve the things that foundationally built our business over the years—a lot of businesses, communities, Little League, things of that nature, along with being another option for people over the years from going to Costco or substitute a visit with the club-size type offerings that we carry. Dave really put that focus back that we can never lose that niche. That always needs to be part of what we do. While we expanded a lot of retail, at the same time when Dave came he added back a lot of business items and a lot of club items.”

Mahony said Hirz is a “straight shooter,” telling it like it is. “He’s always the first guy to recognize something that you’ve done that’s either impressive or that he appreciates,” he said. “At the same time, he’s going to make sure that you hold yourself accountable for achieving results.”

As group VP for operations, Mahony said while Mondays and Tuesdays often are spent in meetings, he tries to spend the rest of his week out in the stores with district managers, loss prevention teams and others in the field. It’s something Hirz encourages his senior leaders to do.

“I’m just trying to keep a pulse on our business and how we’re doing. A lot of the policies and procedures that I roll out here operationally, I get to see them in action and can talk with managers and make sure the desired effect actually is being achieved. And if there are things we need to tweak, based on their feedback, we do.” Mahony has worked on advancing his education throughout his career with Smart & Final. He graduated from Long Beach State University after taking evening classes for nine years.

“I powered it out,” he said.

He also went through USC’s FIM program in 1999.

He said Hirz encourages others to continue their educations and “helped inspire me to influence others in our organization to try and attain their education or participate in the Retail Management Certificate program.

“I took that to heart,” Mahony said. “It’s important to me. Dave has continued to invest in my education through the Cornell Food Industry Management Program,” which he attended in 2015.

He added that about a year ago, a group of Smart & Final leaders attended some specialized courses at USC.

“It was about continuously trying to improve our leadership skills in a really changing environment out there in the grocery industry,” Mahony said.

In addition to caring about education, Hirz also cares about his team on a personal level.

“Dave does a lot of little things, whether it’s a birthday card that shows up in your mailbox on your birthday or other thoughtful things that a guy with his level of responsibility, it’s easy not to do stuff or be too busy,” Mahony said. “Dave’s never too busy to be thinking about his people. It’s something you aspire to be more like yourself.”

Hirz never too busy ‘to be thinking about his people’

Sean Mahony

Acedo: Hirz ‘makes me a better leader’

Kassandra Acedo pretty much grew up in the Smart & Final organization. Starting in operations as a college student 14 years ago, she worked her way from the store level through the buying department, to replenishment buyer, to associate category manager, to category manager and now as director of category management.

“I was fortunate enough to find a job at a young age that allowed me to have opportunities over and over again. As I got more experience, I got more opportunities,” she said.

Acedo oversees the grocery team—the buyers that manage the assortment, pricing and merchandising for the dry grocery category. She currently is on medical leave battling cancer.

When Dave Hirz joined Smart & Final, she was already at a management level, managing a small team, and always had reported to Matt Reeve. She began interfacing with Hirz in meetings, where she had to present reports to him and other executives.

Acedo was managing the frozen food category when Hirz came on board in 2010. She said he knew that she had worked in the stores since college and that she was “organically grown, if you will,” and he took a lot of interest in that.

She got to know Hirz better as he would drop by her office, and they would talk about changes in the industry and the changes they wanted to make at Smart & Final.

“He was always very interested in what I had to say,” Acedo said. “I always thought it to be such a cool work environment.”

Acedo describes Hirz as a very intense listener.

“Any time I would speak with him, it was like he would give me his full attention, and he would be very interested in what I had to say and was always asking me questions,” she said. “I always found that to be such a great quality in a leader; one that I didn’t really have with the previous CEO or previous management. He really cares and takes an interest. And it wasn’t just me. Any time anybody spoke to him, you could really tell he took a big interest in what they were saying.”

She said she believes Hirz’s listening skills are what makes him very successful as a CEO.

“It allows him to make well-informed decisions,” Acedo said.

Acedo was diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer two years ago, “and it rocked my world.”

She said it’s been a long struggle, longer than she expected. She has undergone

four surgeries, 12 rounds of chemo and radiation and “it feels like everything under the sun in terms of treatment. It’s still, unfortunately, very aggressive.”

She is being treated at City of Hope, a place she said is “very near and dear to our world, the grocery world.”

During her battle with cancer, she said Hirz has always been “very sincere and very genuine.”

“Given his title and his position, for him to send me get-well flowers and to remember to call me on my birthday—he’s just a rare breed,” she said. “I just always appreciated his genuine support, given it’s also been a longer battle than I had expected.”

She has been out of work about 18 months.

Acedo said not only has Hirz been very supportive, but he has encouraged others to rally around her, too.

“I certainly feel very, very fortunate to have everyone’s support,” she said.

Acedo is getting ready to start an immunotherapy treatment that she hopes will get her “to a better place.”

She said she has a lot to fight for, including her husband, a 9-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. She also said she misses her job.

“I must have been not even a month out, and I remember writing an email to Dave and a couple of the other executives who wanted updates,” Acedo said. “I thought, I miss the grind, I miss the emails, I miss the chaos. I love it there. It’s been a great company for me with a ton of opportunities, none of which would have been possible without leaders like Dave. I’m very grateful. I learned so much from them on a daily basis.”

She said observing Hirz in his meetings and interactions with others has been a great learning experience.

“It makes me a better leader,” she said. “I have a team I manage, much smaller, obviously, but watching Dave listen so intensely makes me want to be that for my team.”

Acedo is courageously battling cancer.

Kassandra Acedo with husband Adam and children: Noah, 9, and Ava, 5.

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Hirz is a very ‘consensus-driven’ leader

Lee Smith, SVP of real estate, general counsel and corporate secretary, has been with Smart & Final for three-and-a-half years. He said he was recruited by Dave Hirz and now supervises the real estate and legal functions of the company.

Smith joined the company with a background in retail—working for two toy companies, including Mattel, and for Guitar Center. He said having experience in retail and understanding the immediacy of serving customers has been useful in his position with Smart & Final.

“It’s helpful to understand that you can’t participate in running a big $5 billion revenue retailer by sitting behind your desk,” Smith said. “You have to get out in the field, and you have to understand what’s going on at the store level because without the stores we don’t exist, and the company doesn’t need us.”

He said that’s part of the reason the name of the headquarters building was changed from “Corporate Headquarters” to “Store Support Center.”

“We wanted to reinforce the concept that everybody in this building owes their job to the stores,” he said.

Smith said coming from outside the grocery business may be seen by some as a negative, but Hirz didn’t view it that way. He said looking at Hirz’s management team, there are several members who didn’t have any grocery experience.

“I think it’s to his credit that he has been willing to go outside of grocery to bring in more diverse opinions and more diverse backgrounds,” Smith said. “And I think that’s really been very positive because grocery doesn’t have all the answers. No one industry segment has all the answers and…I think there’s a balance there that is positive.”

Smith said Hirz is a very consensus-driven leader.

“He wants to know what everybody thinks and particularly doesn’t pay a lot of attention to who is responsible for what from a reporting responsibility, so if somebody has a good idea but it’s an idea that is sort of outside the four corners of their

functional responsibility, he wants to hear it,” Smith said.

Smith said that is a part of his job that he enjoys the most, the ability to participate in making decisions that affect the business as a whole “as opposed to just sitting in my little box and just worrying about legal and real estate matters.”

He said the idea to rename the headquarters building was something Guitar Center had done.

“That idea sort of came from the group and was embraced by the group, and Dave made the decision to go with it,” Smith said.

He said when considering joining the Smart & Final team, he was looking for some specific traits in Hirz.

“I think at the end of the day everybody wants to be treated with respect, they want the opportunity to effect change,” Smith said. “In interviewing with Dave and listening to the other team members talk about Dave, I believed that he was going to provide both of those, and that’s the way it has turned out. I mean, Dave’s a pretty quiet guy. I’ve never heard him yell at anybody, and he works really hard to solicit opinions and incorporate various opinions into his decision-making process. Again, which gives folks like me—who have a more narrow functional responsibility—the ability to have a bigger impact on the business as a whole, and that gets to the second part, which is the ability to effect change. And again, because Dave’s a consensus-driven leader, he provides that opportunity.”

Smith also said he appreciates the autonomy he has in his job, believing Hirz has confidence that he will come to him when necessary but otherwise he will get the job done.

“And, you know, having done this for 30 years I have a pretty good idea how to do it,” he said.

Part of Hirz’s ability to lead the company lies in his command of the statistical data around operating the business, he said.

“Dave just has an amazing grasp of the numbers in a way that is really impressive, but at the same time he’s also been in the business his whole life,” Smith said. “I think he has been studying the industry forever.”

Congratulations to Dave Hirz Food Industry Hall of Fame Inductee

Cheryl Kennick-Senior Director, Corporate Philanthropy City of Hope/Food Industries Circle

Dave Hirz-President Food Industries Circle 2010-2011

Congratulations and thank you for your partnership and friendship over your long career in support of our mission. Because of your caring heart, families around the world are celebrating cherished memories. Your commitment has helped make City of Hope #1 in the West and #11 in the Nation. With much gratitude, from a grateful City Hope family!

Lee Smith

2019 Food Industry Hall of Fame

Hirz a leader in giving back

While Smart & Final had a philanthropic foundation before Dave Hirz came on board in 2010, no one disputes that he has encouraged, across the company, a greater determination to give back to local communities.

Through its three charitable foundations, Smart & Final supports its local communities, its associates and local food banks.

Several Smart & Final executives lauded Hirz on the example he has set for the company, encouraging everyone—from his senior leadership team to store associates— to get involved and give back. Not only does the company give back, but Hirz and his wife Julie have created the Hirz Family Foundation to personally give back. Daughters Makenzie and Taylor are involved in the foundation, so that the family’s charitable efforts will be perpetuated.

“He is super supportive of any kind of industry or charitable event that we all participate in,” said Matt Reeve, group VP of sales and merchandising. “He’ll be the first one to tell us to take the time we need to go support Boy Scouts, Olive Crest, City of Hope or Cystic Fibrosis.”

Smart & Final supports three charitable foundations. The Smart & Final Charitable Foundation is very involved in supporting community organizations, youth sports in particular. A separate education foundation supports the company’s associates and their dependents. The company’s Smart Foodservice organization has a separate charitable foundation that’s very involved with food banks in the 67 communities where the warehouse stores are located.

“Being involved and giving back is a big part of this company and part of the culture of this company,” noted Rick Phegley, EVP and CFO.

for donations. We raised $465,000 and were able to give a check to Olive Crest,” said Scott Drew, EVP of administration.

The company also reaches out during times of natural disasters, such as wildfires.

“When there’s fire victims, we are there to help and donate water. Where there are other tragedies, we are there,” said Don Butterfield, VP of non-perishables.

Hirz participated in the Orange County Tumor Walk in honor of mentor Harold McIntire. McIntire was president of Food 4 Less until his retirement in 1999. He passed away from a brain tumor in early 2004. Also pictured is Hirz’s wife Julie and Bryan Kaltenbach, who was Hirz’s VP of operations at Food 4 Less at the time and now is president of that company.

The company’s Smart & Final Charitable Foundation’s annual golf tournament raises more than half a million dollars. Recipients of proceeds include Olive Crest, the Boy Scouts, City of Hope or other organizations.

“We recently had a campaign for Olive Crest where we raised money at the register, at the point of sale, asking customers

On Aug. 12 this year, the Smart & Final Charitable Foundation presented Olive Crest with the largest donation yet from its annual pledge drive. Dave Hirz and members of the Smart & Final management team presented longtime partner Olive Crest, represented by founder Lois Verleur and National Development Director Rhonda Tagge, with a $465,000 donation collected during the annual pledge drive, which ran June 21-July 9. Olive Crest was founded in 1973 by Dr. Donald and Mrs. Lois Verleur, who were helping four teenage girls in need. Funds raised support children so every day can be a Safe Day—a day a child goes without abuse or neglect. Smart & Final’s donation equates to 64,980 safe days. It is the only grocery retailer to raise funds at this level.

Also in August, the the Smart & Final Charitable Foundation won a Food Marketing Institute (FMI) Community Outreach Award for its support of the 2018 KFI AM 640 and Caterina’s Club 8th Annual PastaThon. From Nov. 16-Dec. 7, 2018, Smart & Final stores gathereds money, pasta and sauce for kids in need. A 501(c)3 nonprofit start-ed by Anaheim White House owner/chef Bruno Serato, Caterina’s Club provides warm meals, affordable housing assistance and hospitality job training for youth homeless and low-income families throughout Southern California. Currently, Caterina’s Club serves dinner to nearly 5,000 children nightly around Orange and Los Angeles counties.

Industry friends offer congratulations

I have known Dave since my days at Ralphs when we were introduced through the Yucaipa merger of Ralphs with Alpha Beta and Food 4 Less, back in the ’90s. Dave was running operations then and was already a strong leader with a great work ethic. I have gotten to know Dave very well over the past 20 years and have had the opportunity to work closely with him on many food industry and philanthropic boards. He has grown into one of the preeminent executives in the retail grocery industry, not only in Southern California but on a national level as well. Dave’s leadership at Food 4 Less, Ralphs and Smart & Final as well as all of the great community and philanthropic work he does in support of our industry and our community is inspirational. Dave has grown companies successfully and profitably and has taken them both public and private over his stellar career. I am honored to know Dave and his wife Julie and consider them among our closest friends. My wife Cindy and I congratulate Dave and Julie Hirz and all of Smart & Final on this recognition and extend our best wishes for the future.

Sincerely, Kevin & Cindy Davis Bristol Farms/Lazy Acres

Congratulations and thank you for your partnership and friendship over your long career in support of our mission (Dave Hirz served as president of the Food Industries Circle, 2010-11). Because of your caring heart, families around the world are celebrating cherished memories. Your commitment has helped make City of Hope No. 1 in the West and No. 10 in the nation.

With much gratitude, from a grateful City of Hope family! Congratulations Dave and the Smart & Final family!

Cheryl Kennick

Senior Director, Corporate Philanthropy

City of Hope/Food Industries Circle

Duarte, California

Food Industry Hall of Fame

Congratulations, Dave!

It has been an honor to work with you over these past five years to provide thought leadership and education for your future leaders. We have worked on several initiatives together, and I’m captivated by your focused passion for your people. In the words of Jim Collins, you are a true “Level 5 Leader” who: 1) demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever it takes to consistently achieve tremendous results; 2) sets up your people as successors in the next generation of leaders; and 3) acts with quiet, calm determination and fanatical drive to motivate your team. Thank you for your true servant leadership.

Cynthia McCloud, EdD Director, Food Industry Programs, Executive Education Adjunct Professor, Marshall School of Business University of Southern California, Los Angeles

To The Shelby Report, thank you for letting me take a moment to express a few thoughts on Dave Hirz. From the bike to the boardroom you will not find a finer individual.

I first met Dave 20 years ago at a Top to Top meeting in Ralphs boardroom. I had heard of Dave Hirz, who was president of Ralphs, but had never met him. So, when Dave entered the boardroom at 6’4” and sat down across from me (a lowly Gillette district manager), I was slightly intimidated. However, my trepidation quickly passed as Dave immediately established a collaborative demeanor and asked insightful questions, constantly encouraging the group to explore options to drive growth. It was evident then—and clear now—that Dave’s leadership has guided Ralphs, Food 4 Less and Smart & Final to tremendous success. And, since that initial meeting, it has been a privilege and a pleasure to engage with Dave in both business and adventurous settings.

Bicycling: In 2011, my first bike ride linked to Dave Hirz was in absentia; I took his spot. Kevin Davis and Bob Kelly asked me to join them on a bicycle trip from Big Sky, Montana, through Yellowstone to Jackson Hole. I said, “absolutely,” and asked them when they planned to embark on this journey. Kevin’s response was “next week.” Being a sales guy, I said, “no problem.” However, I did not have a bike. That was quickly resolved, and as we landed in Bozeman, Montana, we were still peeling plastic wrapping from a brand new Specialize Roubaix. Consequently, Kevin, Bob, Kory and Pete scratched their heads as to why they didn’t invite someone else (other than me). It was simple Dave Hirz had a business conflict and couldn’t go, hence they needed a lesser rider for entertainment value. The ride was epic, and had it not been for Dave missing this adventure, I would never had begun cycling with this group, and for that, Dave, I am truly indebted. Since that time Dave and the group have embarked on several cycling adventures. Two of our noteworthy rides were: King of the Mountain Challenge (three 100-plus mile rides that each climbed over 11,000 feet) and Monterey to Santa Barbara (three days cycling down the Pacific Coast Highway). Epic!

When riding, there are two characteristics that have become synonymous with Dave Hirz:

1) He never gives up regardless of the challenge or the pain he may be enduring!

2) Once Dave passes you going downhill, you will catch a quick glimpse of him streaking by (he’s impervious to speed).

Giving Back: Dave has been deeply involved with and has led nearly all SoCal grocery industry charity functions (City of Hope, Olive Crest, WAFC, USC). However, his philanthropy extends well beyond the grocery industry and into his community, where he has helped the local schools and several other organizations. Dave has an intrinsic purpose to “give back” and make the world a better place; it’s in his DNA.

Family and Friends: They say that you can judge an individual by the friends they keep. When you observe the company that Dave surrounds himself with, this platitude could not ring truer. Industry leaders like Kevin Davis, Don Ropele, Bob Kelly, Oscar Gonzales, Jerry Whitmore and Cheryl Kennick are just a few of Dave’s dear friends. And he has many other friends inside and outside of the industry. However, despite the demands on Dave’s time, his family is by far the most precious treasure to him, and you will not find a better husband and father.

Boardroom: Smart & Final was recently bought by Apollo, and in Apollo’s mind there was only one choice to lead the transition and the Smart & Final company, Dave Hirz. Dave’s work ethic and appreciation for the Smart & Final team is unparalleled.

I have had the good fortune to observe Dave’s journey from the bike to the boardroom, and as stated you will not find a finer individual. Dave, congrats! We wish you and your terrific Smart & Final team continued success.

John White VP-National Sales, Frozen Division Dean Foods Co. Dallas, Texas

Dave, congratulations on being inducted into the Shelby Report’s Food Industry Hall of Fame. Well deserved.

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams