Publix is the Supermarket News 2024 Retailer of the Year

It’s been a big year for Publix Super Markets Inc., which opened 45 new stores in 2023 and a dozen more in the first quarter of 2024 and is branching out into new markets like Kentucky.

The grocery chain, which reported $57.1 billion in sales in 2023, operates nearly 1,400 stores in eight states across the south and employs more than a quarter of a million people. 

Publix is known for regularly making best workplace and customer satisfaction lists, and the grocer also holds the distinction of being the largest employee-owned company in the U.S.

That started with Publix’s late founder George Jenkins, who created the employee-ownership plan to help workers share in the company’s success. 

These are just a few factors that led to Publix’s selection as the Supermarket News 2024 Retailer of the Year. SN staff recently traveled to Publix’s corporate headquarters in Lakeland, Fla., to meet its leadership and tour one of the grocer’s newer store concepts.

We even got a chance to try one of the grocer’s signature Pub Subs, a Publix delicacy that keeps customers coming back to the grocer with the green color scheme. 

George Jenkins, also known as Mr. George, opened the first Publix Food Store in Winter Haven, Fla., in 1930.

Publix origins

Jenkins, commonly known as “Mr. George” by Publix employees, was born in 1907 and grew up working in general stores his father owned in Harris City and Atlanta, Ga. 

As a young adult, Jenkins left Georgia for Florida and got a job as a clerk at a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in 1925. He was later promoted by the company to manage a Piggly Wiggly in Winter Haven, Fla. 

After working in the position for a few years, Jenkins traveled to Atlanta to visit the owner of the chain and submit his ideas for improving the store. When he arrived, Jenkins was turned away but overheard the owner talking to someone about his golf game. 

Being ignored by the owner drove Jenkins to make the hard decision to go his own way and open his own store. This is the moment in Publix lore that would mark the beginning of the rise of the grocery chain. 

Jenkins went back to Florida and searched for where he would open his first store. It was about the ability to “feel heard, the ability to have ownership,” said Publix Communications Director Maria Brous.

In 1930, Jenkins found his first location just two doors down from the Piggly Wiggly in Winter Haven and borrowed the name Publix from a New York City-based movie theater company that was going out of business. Publix’s gross annual profits were about $100,000 for the first few years of business. 

Five years later, he opened a second Publix location, and in 1940, he sold the two original stores and mortgaged an orange grove he had purchased to raise the money to open his first supermarket. 

“He built his food palace of marble, glass, and stucco and equipped it with innovations never seen before in a grocery store. Air-conditioning. Fluorescent lighting. Electric-eye doors. Frozen food cases. Piped-in music. Eight-foot-wide aisles. Open dairy cases designed to Mr. George’s specifications. In-store doughnut and flower shops. People traveled from miles to shop there, and Publix prospered,” according to a history of the supermarket chain on the Publix website. 

Publix would undergo its biggest expansion in the company’s history in 1945, when the grocer purchased 19 All American supermarkets from Lakeland Grocery Co. and converted them to Publix stores.  

The company continued to expand over the coming decades, as did the value of its stock, which grew from $2.50 per share in 1958 to $44 per share in 1969. 

Mr. George outside a Publix store speaking with an associate who is collecting carts.

By the end of the 1980s, Publix operated 367 stores and employed 64,000 people. The company continued innovating through the decade, being among the first to deploy checkout scanning technology and ATMs. Total annual revenue reached $5.4 billion in 1989. 

The company’s expansion continued with the opening of its first store outside of Florida, a Publix in Savannah, Ga., in 1991. The grocer’s footprint would spread further in the years to come to South Carolina (1993), Alabama (1996), Tennessee (2002), North Carolina (2014), Virginia (2017), and Kentucky (2024).

Employee buy-in

Investing in employees has been a central tenet of Publix culture since its founding, according to Brous. 

After Jenkins was snubbed by Piggly Wiggly executives, he set his sights on building a business where employees would be heard and have skin in the game. 

“He knew from the very beginning the importance that ownership would play in our company and in our history,” Brous said. “He wanted each associate to own stock within that very first store, and he knew that it was going to be difficult for them to do that, so he gave them a $2-a-week raise and held the $2, and by the end of the year, they owned Publix stock.”

Publix allows employees to buy company stock through its PROFIT (People Reaching Our Future Investing Together) Plan, which provides associates shares of stock automatically after they’ve worked 1,000 hours within a full year.

Employees can also participate in Publix’s stock purchase plan after working a full year at the company. Additionally, Publix offers a 401(k) retirement savings plan, which matches a percentage of employee contributions up to a certain amount. 

Publix CEO Kevin Murphy told Supermarket News in a recent interview that the company’s current employee stock ownership plan is based on the original idea established by Jenkins. 

“If you’re willing to come to Publix and you’re willing to work hard and help make Publix successful, you are going to benefit tremendously in the long term, because you’re going to have ownership,” he said. “It has grown into something so unique and so different. It’s incredible in our 94-year history how many truck drivers and deli clerks and stock clerks have become millionaires.”

That could be the reason so many of the company’s high-ranking officials have been with the company for decades. 

For instance, Murphy joined Publix as a front service clerk in Margate, Fla., in 1984, rising to the position of store manager a little over a decade later. Over the next 30 years, he would be promoted to a variety of positions, including district manager in 2003, regional director in 2009, vice president of the Miami division in 2014, senior vice president of retail operations in 2016, and president in 2019. 

At the beginning of 2024, Murphy succeeded Todd Jones as CEO. Jones, who similarly began his time at Publix in 1980 as a front service clerk in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., became executive chairman of the company. 

Meanwhile, then Senior Vice President John Goff, who began his career at Publix in 1991, also as a front service clerk, was promoted to president.

“We always say that if you stay your first 90 days, you’re likely to make it to your first year. And if you stay here a year, you’re likely to make it to three. And if you’re here three, well, five years comes pretty quickly. And once you’re here for five, we have you for a lifetime,” said Brous, who has been with the company for 34 years.

Reputation for excellence

With more than a quarter of a million employees, Publix is not without its share of controversies and press scrutiny, but the company consistently dominates in rankings spotlighting excellent customer service and happy employees. 

In April, Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list named Publix for the 27th year in a row — one of only four companies to make the list every year since its inception. In October 2023, Fortune recognized the grocer as a top workplace for women and was one of only three retailers to be included on the large companies list. 

Brous said the company strives not only to earn the business of its customers but also to attract and retain associates. “We want them to know that Publix is not only an option, but it is the only option when it comes to being the best place to work and the best place to shop,” she said. 

In September 2023, the grocer made Newsweek’s 2024 America’s Best Customer Service list, ranking No. 1 in the grocery category for the sixth year in a row. The ranking is based on a survey of more than 30,000 U.S. customers.

Lakeland Publix Store Manager Brandon Chambless (left) and Publix Director of Communications Maria Brous. Photo credit: Tim Inklebarger

The grocer has also received accolades from shoppers that frequent its in-store pharmacies. In late July 2024, the J.D. Power 2024 U.S. Pharmacy Study ranked Publix No. 1 in customer satisfaction. The study is based on a survey of some 13,500 pharmacy customers who filled a prescription within the past 12 months. 

“It’s all about listening. We listen to feedback on a regular basis from both customers and associates,” Brous said. 

“You know, the average tenure for our store manager is over 25 years, and that is not an uncommon story for us.”

Innovation is key

When Jenkins opened the first modern Publix supermarket in 1940, it featured technological innovations that many shoppers had never seen before — air-conditioning, music piped in, and fluorescent lighting were just a few of the amenities consumers could expect. 

But that was just the beginning for cutting-edge technology at the grocery chain. These days much of the experimentation takes place at a facility in Lakeland known as The Green House. 

“For us, innovation is really how do we create more efficiencies? How do we create a seamless process for customers?” Brous said.

On any given week at The Green House, Publix workers may be testing new equipment to see how a new rotisserie chicken appliance works, sampling a new self-checkout system, or building a 3-D model of the store to test placement of a new item. The list of projects is endless, Brous said. 

“We bring in associates to see how they work within that environment,” she said. “So, it’s a great opportunity to see things come to life before we actually put it into a store environment.”

The experimentation follows Jenkins’ original vision of searching for innovative ideas for the store to give him an edge over the competition. Before the internet or even TV being common in people’s homes, Jenkins would travel the country in search of new ideas. 

“Every year, he’d go to the World’s Fair and look at ideas that were in different businesses,” Brous explained, noting that Jenkins would bring back ideas and try to put them into play at Publix stores. “He was definitely a man ahead of his time.”

Today, Publix continues to improve its tech game with its digital wallet program and mobile apps. The Publix App gives shoppers easy access to buy-one-get-one-free offers, digital coupons, shopping lists, past purchases, and more. 

The grocer also offers the Publix Delivery App through its partnership with last-mile delivery company Instacart, which began offering 15-minute delivery in 2022. Publix also features a third app for its pharmacy customers that allows shoppers to refill prescriptions, set reminders, and receive health-related notifications.

The company is also making substantial capital investments in its behind-the-scenes technology, announcing in August 2023 plans to expand its IT workforce in Lakeland with hundreds of new positions that pay an average salary of $130,000 — more than double the average annual salary in Polk County, according to Steve Scruggs, president of the Lakeland Economic Development Council.  

The investment in IT supports the grocer’s expansion, which is coming at no small cost. Publix said earlier this year in its annual financial report to investors that it increased its capital expenditures in 2023 by nearly 28% year over year to $2.3 billion. 

“We do have to invest as we grow,” Murphy told Supermarket News in a sit-down interview at Publix’s corporate headquarters. “We have a very robust and very efficient supply chain, and we have a fleet of our own trucks and our own drivers and feel like it’s a lot more efficient when we have talented and dedicated Publix associates who are managing that supply chain and delivering to our stores.” 

Publix is the largest employee-owned company in the U.S.

He said that over the last few years the company opened a campus distribution center in Greensboro, N.C., and they’re currently adding a frozen food warehouse and expanding a refrigerated warehouse at Publix’s Jacksonville, Fla., campus. 

Publix currently operates 10 distribution centers in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama. The company also runs bakery plants in Lakeland and Atlanta; dairy plants in Dacula, Ga., and Deerfield Beach, Fla.; fresh kitchens in Deerfield Beach and Lakeland; a produce snacks operation in Orlando; and a printing services operation and deli kitchen in Lakeland. 

“Our supply chain is just really growing at a nice, steady pace. And every once in a while, we’ve got to make some big investments to make sure that we’re planning for the future,” Murphy said.

Looking forward

The growth of the company’s backend infrastructure is running parallel with Publix’s expansion of in-store products. They maintain a focus on producing their own goods for sale at the store and growing their private-label brand.

“We’re very proud of our private-label brand,” Murphy said. “We have six manufacturing plants, so we make a lot of our own perishable products.”

That includes deli meats and cheeses, baked goods, and other products that are sold under the Publix label and produced by third-party partners. 

“We like the relationship that we have with our national brand suppliers, and we believe working together with our suppliers … we’re able to come together in that partnership and offer really good value for our customers,” Murphy said.

He said that Publix offers private-label and Publix-made products that are high quality rather than producing discount products for their brand. 

“. . . If it’s a Publix brand, and if we’re going to put our name on it, it’s going to be high quality,” Murphy added.

The high-quality standard set for its private-label products holds true for its customer service, grab-and-go offerings, and pharmacy, as well as the commitment the grocer has made to its workforce for nearly a century. SN expects that high bar for excellence will continue, and we congratulate Publix for being named 2024 Retailer of the Year.