SAVE MART EXECUTIVE INSTILLS CULTURE OF CONSERVATION

MICHAEL GARRY

MODESTO, Calif. - While many retailers are turning to sophisticated technology to monitor and control energy usage in stores, some are also trying to instill a culture of energy saving among employees.

Ray Agah, director of engineering at Save Mart here, has been waging a campaign at the 125-store chain to educate store personnel about the need to pay attention to energy conservation. Agah, who presented his views at the Food Marketing Institute's Energy and Technical Services Conference last month, believes that any food retailer would benefit from that approach.

"We need to spend time with store managers, assistant managers and department managers and walk them through the store," he said. "At the end of the day, store people have to understand."

Agah even supports the creation of a special position - energy conservation captain - responsible for instilling energy consciousness. Such an executive would "tell people, when you're not in the room, shut off the light. It's that simple," he said.

Agah appears to serve that role at Save Mart. He described a conversation with a group of store managers where he pointed out that most of them would pursue a shoplifter they saw pilfering a $7 bottle of shampoo. And then he added, "Yet, every moment the front door or the back door is left open, the utility companies are stealing cases and cases of shampoo and nobody cares."

In another instance, Agah described a time when he was in a store and noticed that the door to the dairy cooler was left open. He decided to wait to see how long it would take for someone to close the door.

"After five or six minutes, a guy shows up and goes into the cooler," he said. "I asked him, 'Why did you leave the door open?'" Not persuaded by the employee's explanation, Agah said he responded, "Imagine it's a Sunday afternoon and you're watching football, and you leave the refrigerator door open because you want a beer later on."

The employee's response, Agah related, was "No, that's stupid."

To which Agah said he replied, "I rest my case."

Agah emphasized he was not trying to demean the employee, just to make a point. "We need to partner up with operations people and discuss this matter, more and more," he said.

Agah has also focused his attention on Save Mart's bakery departments. Although they now use the bake-off approach, having long since stopped preparing products from scratch, "the mind-set of bakers is to come in and turn on the oven," he said. "They might not cook until the afternoon, but they turn on the oven anyway."

He said he also observes exhaust fans running in the bakery long after that's necessary. "If you sit down and explain to them that for every dollar they throw away that way, they have to sell $65 to $70, they might look at it differently."

Recognizing a similar issue in its delis, Food Lion, Salisbury, N.C., earlier this month said it is launching a three-week campaign to make store deli employees aware of their ability to impact their store's energy consumption. The retailer noted in a statement that letting an exhaust hood run one extra hour per day costs a store $1,500 more in energy each year.

Food Lion said the campaign will use scratch-off cards to help deli associates think about the energy consumed in their department.

The effort is part of a larger conservation emphasis at Food Lion, which last year was named a charter member of a task force of utilities, businesses and agencies developing a National Plan for Energy Efficiency facilitated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the EPA. The group drives policy re-commendations designed to create an aggressive national commitment to energy efficiency.

Food Lion was named to the panel as a result of its success in the Energy Star program also administered by the DOE and EPA.

Food Lion is also encouraging employees at its corporate headquarters to change at least one bulb in their home to a compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb. During the pledge campaign, Food Lion and a vendor partner are giving away 100 CFL bulbs and are using articles, posters and brochures to educate employees about conserving energy at home. CFL bulbs use at least two-thirds less energy than a standard incandescent and lasts as much as 10 times longer, Food Lion said.

Corporate Citizenship

Agah said he was also a proponent of promoting Save Mart's energy conservation efforts to consumers in order to impress on them that the retailer is a good corporate citizen.

For example, when Save Mart earned over $1 million in rebates from local utility companies for upgrading its lighting fixtures, this was promoted. "We make sure customers know we do these things not only for us, to save money, but to be a better citizen for them," he said.

Save Mart also touts that all of its new stores use at least 30 skylights, enabling the stores to use less electrical energy. Because shoppers were not aware of this saving, "we made a big deal about it," he said. It also became a competitive issue. "We told them you can go to Mr. W and see they're using all of their lightbulbs and we are not."

Agah also noted that Save Mart uses a secondary-loop refrigeration system in new stores for medium-temperature cases like meat and produce. Though slightly more expensive to run than a conventional system, the secondary-loop apparatus suffers fewer leaks and requires less maintenance. It also supported a fresher meat case."

Save Mart promoted the freshness advantage and also the environmental pluses of the system. "We don't use 600 pounds of Freon, just 100 pounds," he said.