Junqueiro Eyes Albertsons Integration at Save-Mart

ELLIOT ZWIEBACH

NAME: STEVE JUNQUEIRO

Title: Executive vice president, Save Mart Supermarkets

Biggest challenge: Integrating systems and implementing best practices at the 128 stores Save Mart acquired last year.

MODESTO, Calif. — Steve Junqueiro likes to travel with his family — but his travel for the past 18 months has been pretty much restricted to business trips around Northern California, where his company, Save Mart Supermarkets, was busy converting 128 former Albertsons stores to the Lucky and Save Mart banners.

Junqueiro, 52, was named executive vice president of Save Mart last March, just prior to the onset of the store conversions, with oversight of merchandising, marketing, operations, engineering, real estate, distribution and communications. He played a major role in the conversion process, which started in April and ended in October and doubled the size of Save Mart.

With the former Albertsons stores all converted to the Lucky banner in the San Francisco Bay Area and to the Save Mart banner elsewhere, “the challenge now is to make sure we run the business properly,” Junqueiro told SN. “The job is to concentrate on integrating the backstage systems and processes, and implementing best practices to make sure we get the best return on our investment. That means integrating the supply chain and warehouse technologies.”

Following the retirement of former President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Spengler at the end of 2007, Junqueiro became the No. 2 executive at the 248-store chain, “and he's done a great job on whatever we've asked him to do,” Bob Piccinini, Save Mart chairman and chief executive officer, told SN.

Save Mart's goal for 2008 is to complete the integration of its 248 stores to the same platform “so we can order from a single system,” Junqueiro said. “We're in the middle of that transition now, and plans are to begin testing the system by the end of April and have it in full operation by mid-September.”

Save Mart is still shipping product to the acquired stores from two former Albertsons distribution centers it also acquired — an 850,000-square-foot grocery warehouse in Vaca-ville, Calif., and a 480,000-square-foot perishables facility in Roseville, Calif. The Vacaville and Roseville centers operate on an IDMS system, while Save-Mart's 260,000-square-foot perishables warehouse in Merced, Calif., operates on a Lawson system. Save Mart has opted to install a new system, Retalix, for the entire enterprise, Junqueiro said.

Initial testing of the new system is scheduled to begin in April at the Vacaville warehouse “because there's no fresh product coming out of there. Once that gets going, we'll run the system to test fresh applications at that warehouse before installing it at Roseville in late July, with Merced to follow in late September,” Junqueiro explained.

An 840,000-square-foot grocery and frozen food warehouse in Lathrop, Calif., which is jointly operated by Save Mart and Sacramento-based Raley's, will retain its existing proprietary system, “but all our stores will be able to communicate with all warehouses, including Lathrop, once the new system has been installed,” Junqueiro explained.

Regarding best practices, he said, “We've been very proactive in terms of incorporating associates from the acquired stores with our legacy associates on various projects and initiatives to utilize the best knowledge available within the company to determine better ways to operate across the entire enterprise over the next couple of years.

“A lot of processes and ways to use and generate data” are among the know-ledge being gleaned from the former Albertsons stores, Junqueiro told SN. “The way they pulled information together and put it into a usable form to merchandise better was done on a very professional scale, and we're now trying to incorporate that into what we do for greater efficiencies at retail so we can operate the business day-to-day at a higher level.

“Those stores also had a wonderful service meat program that we had in only a small way, and expanding that to the Save Marts has been very impactful and strengthened our meat program.”

Junqueiro also said the former Albertsons had a better program for serving more urbanized customers in the bakery-deli area, “and we see huge opportunities to grow our sales by expanding that approach to the Save Mart stores.”

Best practices that Save Mart is passing on to the Lucky banner stores include a different approach to merchandising and service orientation, he added. “For example, we've introduced what we consider to be a very strong produce program at the acquired stores, and we're beginning to see some excellent growth at those stores,” he said.

Junqueiro came out of the produce end of the business. He joined Save Mart in 1974 as a produce clerk, then moved up to produce manager, produce merchandiser, produce operations supervisor, and director of produce and floral before being named corporate vice president, operations, in 2004.

He was chairman of the Produce Marketing Association in 2005, and during his years in the produce industry he assisted the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Service in projects in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and India, offering advice on ways to improve the handling, distribution and marketing of perishable foods.