Danny Wegman 2008

Power 50 Profile Ranking: 6 Title: CEO Company: Wegmans Food Markets Key Developments: Launched ‘New Ways’ initiative; stopped selling cigarettes What's Next: Internal changes; food safety efforts

In addition to running a highly regarded regional chain of 71 stores that gets kudos for its product offerings and employee programs, Danny Wegman likes to set his sights on how he can change the food retailing industry as a whole.

“We like to figure out where we think things should go [in the industry],” said Wegman, who became the company’s chief executive officer in 2005, after many years as the No. 2 executive behind his late father, Robert Wegman. “Sometimes if you do something good for everybody, you help yourself, too. And if you don’t do it, you don’t help yourself and the industry gets behind.”

Wegman is the creator of a new industry initiative called “New Ways of Working Together,” which aims at fostering better retailer-supplier collaboration. It evolved out of another Wegman program, the “New Generation Sales Call,” which focused on making supplier sales calls more productive and less beset by disruptions. The Sales Call program was based in part on data synchronization, an industry standard that Wegman’s Rochester, N.Y.-based chain has done more than practically any other food retailer to leverage and promote.

“Danny Wegman has been a tireless advocate for the value of global standards — especially data synchronization,” said Miguel Lopera, CEO, GS1 and GS1 US.

The New Ways initiative has over the course of the last several months grown rapidly into a global program that is being embraced by standards groups like GS1 US (see profile on Charles Lloyd, Page 74). Wegman was chairman of GS1 US until last December, and stepped down in May as chairman of GS1 US’ parent organization, GS1, Brussels.

Under New Ways, retailers and manufacturers establish consumer-focused common goals and agree on common ways to measure progress toward those goals. Wegmans has kick-started the program by collaborating with five suppliers: Coca-Cola, J.M. Smucker, Procter & Gamble, Kraft and Frito-Lay. “We’re not working with a lot of trading partners,” Wegman told SN. “To do this, a lot of changes have to go on internally and that’s what we’re doing now.”

Another industry issue Wegman is working on is food safety. He became chairman of the Food Marketing Institute’s food safety task force when it was formed in May of last year. This fall, FMI and GS1 US will be launching a new recall portal, which Wegman called a “big accomplishment.”

Traceability is another area the task force will address in concert with the Produce Marketing Association’s Traceability Initiative. “Produce concerns me the most,” he said. “It’s the one food people should eat a lot of.”

Wegmans, which had $4.5 billion in sales last year, attracted attention in February when it stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products. “We think the No. 1 thing we can do for our [employees] is to help them become healthier,” Wegman said. “So we didn’t think it made sense to sell [cigarettes].”

— MICHAEL GARRY