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The Shelby Report of the West • SEPTEMBER 2016

Lou Amen Super A Foods Founder Inducted into Food Industry Hall of Fame as His Company Celebrates 45 Years as a Strong SoCal Independent Lou Amen has had an independent spirit since he was young.

He decided he wanted to graduate from high school a year early, so he went to summer school. He got his diploma, just as he planned, in 1946 in Flint, Michigan.

Soon after, the family moved to Southern California, and Amen went to work for A&P. He became a produce manager at the ripe old age of 17 at the store at Hermosa Beach. He lived in the area where Dodger Stadium is today and had to take a bus, then a streetcar, then another bus to get to the store, but he was determined to work to earn his way.

Today, at 87, the chairman of Super A Foods is still at it, working from about 6 a.m. to noon before heading home to tend to his 50 rose bushes or spend time with his wife, Dorie, or maybe some of their massive extended family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Amen learned fairly early in his career that the only boss he needed (or wanted) was himself.

After working for other people, primarily in produce for most of that time, he bought his first store in 1950 and turned that investment into a 10-store chain that was later sold. That allowed Amen to have the capital to build his own store group.

Super A Foods currently is an eight-store, privately held chain that primarily caters to Hispanic and Asian shoppers in Los Angeles. In an interview with The Shelby Report’s VP-West Bob Reeves at Super A’s offices in Commerce, California, Amen talked about how his company has been successful in the hotly contested Southern California grocery market since 1971, when the first Super A Foods banner store opened. A couple of the keys, in Amen’s estimation, are being a union shop, which has led to a high number of long-term employees who know

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their jobs and do them well, and keeping prices sharp.

It’s also a family company, in every sense of the word. Amen’s son Jim is president of the company; daughter Renee is CFO, Joanne is payroll manager and Jeannie is head buyer; and two sons-in-law, Jude and Ken, also work in the business, along with some members of the third generation.

But, family or not, smiling faces and open doors are hallmarks of Super A Foods, according to those who have done business with the company over the years.

In addition to running his own stores, Lou Amen is well known for his service on the board of directors of Unified Grocers, the member-owned grocery wholesaler. He was first selected to the board of directors of the company—then known as Certified Grocers of California—in 1974 and served as chairman of the board for more than 15 years. Observers say Amen played a strong role in shaping that organization over those years.

Lou and Jim both have served on the board of the California Grocers Association over the past 30 years, and both have served as its chairman. Lou received the CGA Educational Foundation Hall of Achievement Award in 1999 for his commitment and dedication to the food industry. In 2015, Jim, Jeannie, Renee and Joanne received that award as well.

The family has a strong legacy in the Southern California grocery market, and The Shelby Report is pleased to induct Lou Amen into the Food Industry Hall of Fame and celebrate Super A’s first 45 years.

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Lou Amen: Destined to Be an Independent In the early years of a company, it’s not unusual for the owner to be working long, hard hours, so it’s understandable that the details of those days can slip away. So it is with Super A Foods. Key events and dates are known, of course—like the first Super A Foods store opening in 1971—but what’s more interesting is Lou Amen’s journey to becoming an independent grocer and his son Jim’s insights into today’s grocery business.

Jim shared a bit about his dad’s history at a Food Industries Sales Managers’ Club of Los Angeles (FISMC) Luncheon in June that honored Super A Foods and celebrated its 45th anniversary.

As noted, Lou got his first job with A&P in Southern California as a teenager; the year was around 1946. He quickly became the store’s produce manager. A few years later, about 1951, Lou decided it was about time he had a raise. He was not granted the raise, so he decided it was time to move on.

His next opportunity came when a cousin took over the meat department at a store on Vermont in Los Angeles. His cousin told him that the store, owned by Bob Sherry, was struggling, so Lou was able to make a deal with him to rent the store’s produce department for $10 a month.

“He paid all my utilities, everything, garbage pickup—for $10 a month,” Lou says. “He needed a produce guy and I needed a start in the business. I’d go to market with $100 in my pocket and pay for the produce with cash and put it on my little three-quarter-ton pickup and haul it to the store and put it on the shelf.”

Lou was about 22 years old, and he and his wife Dorie already had started their family. When Sherry told him less than a year later that the store was going to have to close the store because he had been cut off by his primary supplier for late payment and had had to go to a more expensive supplier, Lou knew he couldn’t let that happen.

“I said, ‘Look, you get rid of your help, I’ll get rid of my help, and between you and me—and his mother was a checker for us—we’ll make this thing a go. He said, ‘I don’t think this will work’; I said...‘let’s make it work.’ That’s how we started.”

Sherry and Amen, now business partners, paid off all their debt and got the store running smoothly.

“They worked their tails off at that little store, day and night, seven days a week for a long time,” Jim says.

in the back of the stores, behind the other merchandise.

“It was a tough, tough road,” Lou says. “Right after we took on the stores, the union started picketing Leonard. I was union—still union—but needless to say, our business went to hell in a basket. It got to the point where we were going to have to close it. But Bob Leonard didn’t want us to close it.

So I said fine, but I get free rent, free utilities, everything free.

You want a market; that’s what I want. And he gave it to us. So we started turning things around.”

But a dispute with Leonard over bringing in an outside GM/HBC supplier to the stores was the beginning of the end for that business arrangement.

“I was a hothead; my partner was always a level head. That’s why it worked,” Amen admits.

The two then bought a Mayfair store in La Habra, at Harbor and La Habra Boulevard, and called it S&A Foods, after their surname initials.

“We gunned that thing and did real well with it,” Lou said, adding that the year was about 1965.

Lou Amen at Super A headquarters in Commerce, California.

They added a couple more stores in the La Habra market, including another Mayfair store, to the S&A Foods family.

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& our clients wish to congratulate Lou Amen on his induction into the Food Industry Hall of Fame, and Super A’s 45 years of service to the community.

With the store running well, a friend of Lou’s who worked for Leonard Department Stores coordinated a meeting between Lou and owner Bob Leonard, and soon Amen and Sherry leased and ran the grocery departments in three of Leonard’s stores in Torrance, El Segundo and Garden Grove. The grocery departments were located Advantage Solutions_SuperA WE092016.indd 1 page_22-24-25-26-28-note on 26.indd 23

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The Shelby Report of the West • SEPTEMBER 2016

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An executive with Mayfair, Al Martindale, informed Lou they would not sell him any more stores, presumably because he turned the stores he purchased into competition for the remaining Mayfair stores. He proposed that Mayfair buy S&A Foods’ stores and make Lou the head of its discount division.

Always ready for a challenge, Sherry and Amen sold out to Arden Mayfair.

“We bought a store in the Valley that used to belong to Better Foods; before that it was a Safeway. It was between two Hughes Markets and a Boys Market. We opened that thing and did over $350,000. In those days, that was a lot of volume for an 18,000-s.f. store.

“I always wanted to have a store where you let only 10 people in at a time and stand at the door with a key.

That’s what we had—lined-up people. Just unbelievable,” Lou said.

Jim recalls that success as well.

“I was 16 years old, and I never saw so many people in my life,” he says. “Dad was at the front door and could only let so many customers in at a time we were so busy. That was a lot of fun.”

It took about two years before Lou realized that he was not cut out for corporate life: “I can’t have people trying to tell me what to do…I’m an independent; I do my own thing. I’ve always done my own thing.”

So he bought an Alexander’s store on the corner of Sunset and Vermont in Hollywood, which became the first Super A Foods in 1971. All of Lou and Dorie’s kids worked at the store at one time or another, and four of the seven still do today, as well as two sons-inlaw. In addition to Jim, there is daughter Renee Amen, CFO; daughter Joanne Tedmori, who runs the IT department, and her husband Jude Tedmori, who is VP of produce procurement; and daughter Jeannie Miller, head buyer, and her husband Ken Miller, a driver.

Hollywood was a tough market to operate in, so Lou

sold that store. An astute businessman, he purchased four stores with the proceeds from the Hollywood store, picking up those stores from Food Fair, which was leaving Southern California for about $250,000.

“That’s how we really took off,” Jim says.

Lou adds, “The thing is, if you’re successful working for a chain and you have the will to work hard, then you own your own business. That’s what happens with a lot of us.”

He believes success in the grocery industry hinges on some tried-and-true principles.

“It gets back to basics; same thing I learned with my uncle back in the ’40s,” Lou says. “You have to take care of your customer, you have to have a clean store, you have to have the right pricing…If you don’t do that, you’re dead.”

He also has had a strict policy from the beginning about customers coming first.

“If I walk into the store and they’re busy at the checkstand and they see me and open another checkstand, that’s (not right). They should never do it for me; they should do it for customers.”

Super A Foods has been a union operator from its founding, and while its wages and benefits cost it more than its non-union competition, the company has employees that have put in more than 40 years, and that means something.

“The thing is to keep your people happy,” Lou says, not mincing words, as is his habit, and adds: “If you don’t have happy people, they’ll steal you blind and ruin your business.”

Jim says, “Super A has been in business 45 years. We’ve seen a lot of companies come and a lot of companies go, but we have been here 45 and I think we’ll be here another 45.”

Today, Super A Foods operates eight stores in Temple City, Paramount, Bell Gardens, Los Angeles, Montebello, South Gate, Highland Park and Fillmore.

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A family who golfs together…

Lou and Dorie Amen participate in an industry golf tournament.

Jim is more than three-quarters of the way to playing the top 100 U.S. golf courses.

The Amen family is a golfing family. Both Lou and Dorie are accomplished golfers, and so is Jim (rumored to be a scratch golfer, so be aware if you are playing against him).

One of Jim’s goals, in fact, is to play Golf Digest’s top 100 golf courses in the U.S. He’s played 77 of them, thanks in part to grocery industry relationships that have allowed him to play courses in cities where major food manufacturers are based. The golf pro at the club where he’s a member also sometimes helps get him a tee time at an exclusive course.

He recently played at Dallas Country Club and Southern Hills. Southern Hills, which is about number 25 on the list, put him close to having played the top 40 courses. He’s at 39; Augusta National in Augusta, Georgia, where The Masters is played, would complete that part of the list.

“It has been a real fun thing,” he says.

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Second Generation of Amens Capably Running the Show Jim Amen, son of Lou Amen and president of Super A Foods, started working with his dad at his stores on weekends when he was 10 years old. He went to college for one semester and then decided to make the grocery business his career at 19.

Three of his sisters—Renee, Jeannie and Joanne—also work in the business, along with two of their husbands, Jude and Ken. Though Jim is president, they are “all equals that are running the show right now,” Jim says.

But make no mistake—Lou still has a major role in the show.

“Dad still buys the whole grocery line; he still sees the salesmen to this day. He still buys 90 percent of the center store. Jeannie buys some of the snacks and candy, I buy the soda pop and beverages; he buys everything else to this day. And he still knows everything a b o u t e ver y thing—to this day,” Jim says.

“He’s done everything his whole life.”

T h e Southern California grocery market where Super A Foods operates its eight stores has only gotten more competitive over the years since it was

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founded 45 years ago.

“Our biggest competitor is everybody,” Jim says. “When we first got into this business, you went to the neighborhood market to do your grocery shopping. Today, you go to the neighborhood market; your wife likes to go to Target. She probably goes to Costco every three weeks. And also goes to a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods or a Sprouts. So the pie is much smaller than it’s ever been. That’s what our challenge has been—to keep our customer base—and it’s not been easy.”

In fact, Super A had 13 stores at one time, but the recession in 2007 hit the company hard, he says.

“It was a combination of things,” he said. “We had some stores that were weak stores, and leases came up and we let them go.”

But now, “ w e ’ r e looking to buy stores.

I talk to Unified (Grocers , its member-owned food distributor) and different retailers all the time” about what might be available.

As a union company, Super A is at an advantage on purchases after California passed its employee retention law.

“If a union store closes, we can take over without any problems, where a non-union operator is going to have some problems with labor,” he notes.

Super A’s customer base is about 50 percent Hispanic and about 15 percent Asian, with Caucasians and other groups making up the rest. The company knows that the fresh departments are important to all its shopper groups, so great emphasis is placed on meat, produce and hot foods in every store.

“If you go back about 15 years ago, the meat department was about 10 percent of our stores’ business,” Jim says. “Then we looked at a lot of the mercados and they were putting in service meat departments, and now the meat department is like 23 percent of our total business. So we’ve done a wonderful job with our hot meat and our fresh meat and our service meat, and I really think meat and produce are the future of our business. Shoppers can order a lot of things online, but nobody really wants to have somebody else pick out their produce, somebody else pick out their meats.”

Hot foods now make up about 5 percent of Super A’s business. All eight stores offer hot foods like fried chicken, carne asada, carnitas and whole chickens.

Jim believes that the impact on restaurants from minimum wage hikes is going to play into grocers’ favor.

“With minimum wage rising so high, restaurants are going to have to really raise their prices, so it’s going to be our job to make sure that we let our customers know it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to eat at home than eat out,” he says. “Eating at home, you don’t have to pay a 20 percent tip and a 10 percent tax.”

He says cooking shows also have been a boost to grocers as well, encouraging consumers to try cooking at home themselves.

In the past decade or so, “there has been a resurgence of people that want to cook at home. And they want certain ingredients we haven’t carried before.”

The company’s primary beef supplier, Harris Ranch, has enlisted celebrity chefs to visit the Super A stores and do Please see page 26

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cooking demonstrations for shoppers.

“We work hard with the community; that’s very important,” says Jim, who visits his stores about once a week on average. “Hispanics, who are most of our customers, are very loyal customers. Service is key.”

Keeping service levels high is easier when employees are invested in the company.

“Most of my employees have been with us 25, 30 years,” he says. “We have very little turnover, so our service, I think, is much better than anybody else’s. Our stores are very well stocked.

We pay an outside company to give us reports every month (on our customer service) and we do real well with that.

We’re very proud of our service and very proud of our meat departments and produce departments. Because a can of corn is a can of corn. But our meat is beautiful and fresh; our produce is gorgeous. We do a better job than I think our competitors do in that department, but we’re constantly working on that.”

Super A also has gotten into communicating with customers through social media, and Jim’s middle son, Matt, is handling that for the company on a part-time basis. He just started that four months ago and already Super A has gone from 200 to 11,000 followers.

He acknowledged that Hispanic consumers use their cell phones more than other groups because they don’t always have computers in their homes.

And Millennials are notorious for their heavy cell phone use.

“They’re on their cell phones 24/7,” he says. “But it’s not just the Millennials; it’s everybody. My mother and dad are both on Facebook at 87 and 84; they’re on Facebook to keep an eye on the grandkids and what they’re doing.”

Despite the prevalence of online interaction with customers, Super A is not about to abandon its weekly print ads.

“We send out 270,000 a week, and I don’t know how many people read them. But we sure know if we don’t have them, we sure get flak from customers,” he says.

The company also makes sure to keep up appearances at its stores. Last year, for instance, Super A changed all its lightbulbs in its stores to LEDs, replaced refrigerated cases in a couple of stores and refurbished three or four storefronts.

And customers notice.

“People like it when their neighborhood store is spending money to upgrade their store,” he says. “We also put some new graphics on our windows that look really nice.”

Jim has been married for 35 years and, in addition to his three sons, has two grandkids. As noted, son Matt does social media for the company.

His youngest works in the business full-time while the oldest is in the real estate business in Sacramento.

Much like his dad, he expects to work “’til the day I die. Forever. I’m 63; I figure I’ve got another 25 years left.

“I’m a grocer. I come to work every morning and figure out a way to sell groceries. That’s what I do,” Jim says.

“It’s a people business; always has been, always will be. And I like to think that my door is always open to every sales person. I am very easy to see. I try to give everybody a fair shot.

“To those wanting to do business with Super A: Call me up and I’ll give you an appointment. Come on in and see if we can do some business. All I really want to do is sell cases. I don’t want to sell programs; I want to sell cases. Give me the bottom-line price, let’s move cases through the stores.”

Volume cures all problems.”

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Lou Amen, family man Those who know Lou Amen know how important family is to him.

And these days, he can take a little more time to enjoy family. Back when he was getting his own stores up and running, he would put 100,000 miles on a new Chevy every year visiting his stores, leaving home before sunup and coming home after sundown and leaving a lot of the raising of their seven children to his wife.

He and Dorie—who have 44 grandchildren and great-grandchildren—have now been married 67 years. He recognizes the sacrifices she made in their early years, and he is happy for her to do whatever she wants these days—the secret to their successful marriage, he says.

Family vacations these days mean about 30 hotel rooms and nearly 70 people, and Lou is happy to be able to provide those for his family and other financial gifts that his career has allowed him to have.

At 87, “I’m at that age where you worry about taxes,” he says, which is yet another incentive for generosity.

He had some health setbacks last year, dealing with congestive heart failure. Son Daniel Amen, a medical doctor with a thriving medical practice in several U.S. cities and seen on television as well, put Lou on a strict diet that does not include sugar, pasta, bread or rice. He lost 35 pounds and is doing better now.

Lou with sons Jim (Jimmy) and Daniel (Danny).

Whatever comes, Lou says, “I have had a good life and done a lot of things…And I love the grocery business.”

Dorie and Lou in June 2016.

Lou Amen, in their words...

Peter Larkin, President and CEO, National Grocers Association

In 1996, I became the president and CEO of the California Grocers Association, and as you probably know, Lou has been very active in CGA. He is a former chairman of the association and served on the executive committee.

He’s probably one of the first people I met when I came to California. If you know Lou, he can have sort of a gruff exterior, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that underneath all that, he had the best interests of the industry and the association in his heart, and he continued to demonstrate that over the years.

His son, Jim, eventually became (CGA) chairman. That was after I left CGA, but I brought Jim on to the executive committee because Super A and the Amens are synonymous with the grocery business in California. They’re just great people, great givers, always there. They came to every golf tournament and won most of them!

But they’re fun to be around, great people, and if there is anybody who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, it’s Lou Amen.

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In The Spotlight Food Industries Sales Managers’ Club of Los Angeles (FISMC) Luncheon Honoring Super A Foods’ 45th Anniversary Summit House • Fullerton, California • June 8

Jim Amen, president of Super A Foods, with his sister Joanne Tedmori, payroll manager for their family business.

Al Harb with Lou Amen, CEO, Super A Foods.

Seated, from left: Terry & Kim Greene and Sherry Einwater, Super A Foods; standing: Donna Harkema, Farmer John.

Nikki Cloud, Paul Frisina and Pauline Einswater, Farmer John Foods.

Natasha Kanaualoff, Unified Grocers; Lynn Hayes, True Fresh; Brian Goddard, Summit Hill; Esther Hawksley and Jon Tanklage, Marukan Vinergar; Al Hrubeniuk, Smart & Final; Ruben Rodriguez, Summit Hill Candy.

Mary Armstrong Crocker, Alta Dena Dairy; Larry Taylor, Bimbo Bakeries.

Bob Ling, Unified Grocers; Steve Horowitz, Co-Sales; Dan Murphy, Unified Grocers.

Carl Libson and Mike Bracci, CMC Sales & Marketing; Connie Thatcher, Advantage Solutions.

Dottie Beamer, Premier Sales Solutions LLC; Mike Belusko, Constellation Brands.

Cathy Johnson, Ultimate Source Sales; Kent McLain (retired); Debbie Logston, Ultimate Source Sales.

Cathy Johnson, Co-founder, Ultimate Source

For those of you who have had the great pleasure of knowing Lou Amen as I have, this will sound ever too familiar. For those who have not worked with or know Lou, that is a loss, as they don’t make them any better than Lou! Lou taught me a little about everything; from the business to finance to parenting and even gave me guidance with my relationships. His direction was always wise and his words kind. He was very supportive of me and the brands I represented throughout my career as a Bradshaw employee. He then continued to support me when, as a single parent, I took the leap and founded Ultimate Source with Ross Alger. His support and his mentoring continue even to this day.

His kindness was experienced by many, and I was a true recipient of that kindness. As I was faced with single parenthood and struggled with making ends meet, Lou was always a bright star for me at Christmastime. For a number of years at Christmas he gave me Toys R Us gift certificates. My kids had wonderful Christmases, thanks to Lou’s generosity and kindness.

I was also fortunate to come to know the great family of Amens. As they say, “Behind every great man is a great woman,” and this is truly the case with Lou’s Dorie! She is not only as kind, but plays a mean game of golf.

I have enjoyed knowing and calling on Jimmy, Renee and Jeannie over the years as well. This is truly a family that is not only committed to its customers and holds themselves to high standards within our community, they are all a very committed family unit—all great people who are tied to a great man!

Lou, I thank you for being a part of my life and wish you all the best always!

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Sue Klug, Unified Grocers; Bill Davila, Premier Sales Solutions.

Bob Ling, President and CEO, Unified Grocers

Lou Amen, in their words...

I cannot think of a more deserving candidate for the Food Industry Hall of Fame than Lou Amen.

Lou is an industry icon who has been a staunch supporter of Unified and the independent community throughout his long and successful career.

His unwavering commitment to our members, our company, the industry and the community is unparalleled.

On behalf of all of us at Unified, I want to thank Lou and the entire Amen family for all they’ve done for independent grocers and the communities they serve. Lou is a giant of our industry whose example will be a positive influence for those in our industry for generations to come.

Kevin Davis, Chairman and CEO, Bristol Farms

Lou Amen is a founding father of the Southern California grocery industry…I have grown up in this industry over the past 46 years, and with all of that time here in Southern California, Lou was already a legend when I started as a box boy.

Lou has been one of the most inspirational and steadfast leaders and the voice of the independent operators for his entire career. As a successful store operator himself, he has led us all by example. As a longtime chairman and director of Unified Grocers, he has led us through difficult recessions, significant mergers and wave after wave of new competition with a clear eye and steady hand. Throughout his entire career, no matter the severity of the crisis he faced or the success he enjoyed, Lou always spoke his mind openly and honestly and balanced his priorities between work and family with a natural ease that I have always, and will always, admire.

Congratulations Lou, to both you and Dorie and your entire family, on your wonderful and successful career. Your name and legacy will always shine bright in the California food industry and in the Food Industry Hall of Fame.

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