When James McCann was named chief operating officer of Ahold USA in February 2013, he felt dramatic change was imperative for the Carlisle, PA-based retailer, the largest
supermarket chain in the Northeast with annual U.S. sales of approximately $26 billion. Over the next 30 months, AUSA has rebuilt parts of its infrastructure and also re-engineered how the large Dutch-owned retailer went to market. New strategies were introduced, veteran senior managers exited (and other senior executives were added) and there was a noticeable change in Ahold USA’s culture. McCann is acutely aware of some of the criticisms associated with such a radical transformation, but reiterated they were necessary if AUSA was going to survive and ultimately prosper. Now nearly three years into his journey as the company’s top U.S. officer, there has been some recent positive movement when measuring identical store sales and earnings. Food World/Food Trade News recently sat down with McCann at Ahold USA’s headquarters in Carlisle, PA and discussed a wide array of subjects including his vision for AUSA’s future.
Food World/Food Trade News: Having spent your entire retail food career in Europe and Asia prior to becoming COO of Ahold USA, what have you found to be the greatest differences in managing retail in the U.S. vs. your past experiences and what previous learnings have you been able to successfully apply to managing a large retail organization in the U.S.?
James McCann: The biggest difference is understanding the customer and how they live their lives and what needs they have as a result of how they live their lives. The second is the regional differences within the U.S. There are distinct differences between different parts, even in the Northeast market, which is where our businesses currently operate. The third biggest difference is understanding the competitive landscape. We have everything from the very large, very centralized competitor like Wal-Mart or Costco all the way through to cooperative businesses in the New York market like ShopRite that are extremely local and agile. Getting to know those competitors and understanding what they do – both what they do well and what they do less well – and how they react to different actions that our businesses take has been a big part of the journey.
Food World/Food Trade News: Your varied experience overseas has helped you in what fashion here in terms of quickening the learning curve or applying things that you were able to carry over to the U.S.?
James McCann: I think that having worked in so many different parts of the world, I’d like to think that what I have learned is how to learn. I think that the first time that you move to a different market from the one that you have grown up in, it is quite a learning curve. But by the time you’ve done it (and I think that now I am on my eighth different country), you adjust to the learning curve quickly and have a process to do it as well. It is about rapid adaptation and knowing what you don’t know, and knowing not to assume things that work so well in your home market are things that will apply and work in your new market. Especially where people are concerned. There are quite a lot of cultural differences, there are a lot of eating differences, there are differences within the society and you have to get to understand that and then adapt to it. Hopefully, I’ve managed to do that.
Food World/Food Trade News: James, can you capsulize what have been the biggest challenges you have faced since becoming COO in 2013?
James McCann: I think I was a part of the team, which my predecessor was as well, that put together a strategy for the Ahold group called “Reshaping Retail.” It’s a strategy that I believe very strongly. The challenge for me, coming to these businesses – because there are several different ones – was to apply that strategy in this market. Really, it was understanding where our businesses were, referring to the four divisions, Stop & Shop New England, Stop & Shop York, Giant in Maryland, Delaware and DC (“Giant Landover”) and Giant/Martins primarily in Pennsylvania and Virginia (“Giant Carlisle”), plus Peapod. Then understanding where we wanted to go- which was the reshaping of the retail framework and strategy – and then understanding what the plan might look like and what the team might need to look like in order to take us on that journey. That was the brief that the board gave me coming to the U.S. business and that is really what we spent the first 12 months doing, putting together that plan and putting in place many of the building blocks that we are now able to use to actually put that plan into action. We are starting to get results on it.
Food World/Food Trade News: Shortly after being named COO of Ahold USA, you said that the company was in need of major changes in many areas, not only to prosper but ultimately to survive. What areas did you believe needed the most attention and, based on a scorecard 30 months later, how would you evaluate the company’s level of improvement in those areas? Was there a plan back then to replace many senior managers with executives from outside the?
James McCann: I think when the team and I sat down at the beginning of this journey when I arrived, we quickly identified that the market was shifting very quickly. The weaker competitors were either being taken over or were going out of business, and our businesses needed to become both better in the customer’s eyes on our pricing and better in the customer’s eyes on quality, service and assortment. It wasn’t a choice of should we be cheaper or should we be better. We needed to be better and cheaper. That is where this journey of going Northeast, where the journey of going from being a good business to being one of the great U.S. retailers came from. I think in the 30 months we have developed that plan. We have built a team that believes in that plan and we are now well under way on that plan. We are well under way on the journey East about reducing our prices and we are getting credit from customers in terms of how they perceive our prices. We just launched the fourth wave of Thunder, which is what we call each step North or East, reducing our prices and shouting very loudly in the media about it. We are equally well under way on the journey North about quality, service and assortment through a combination of department-by-department transformations. You can now see the wave three Thunder produce marketplace transformations, where we’re almost up to 350 stores, we’ll be finished by October of 2016. On Thunder seven, which is the bakery transformation we were up to 200 by the end of 2015 and we will be finished by October of this year. But equally, wave nine, which is about doubling the Nature’s Promise brand that it is today, is now well under way and will be deployed in 2016. Wave 11, which is about the transformation of our dairy portfolio – where we know that we’ve got enormous opportunities but we are completely under-spaced in the stores – again that plan is going to be deploying during 2016. . Of course, communicating about our journey is extremely important, and it’s exciting for associates. We had a conference where we linked together all four divisions with the AUSA offices and 7,400 people heard the same message about this journey and I think because it’s starting to happen, because it’s starting to work, it’s become something which people are really starting to believe in. This is our journey. That’s what we have set out to do.
Food World/Food Trade News: Where would you be after 30 months in terms of “here’s my level of satisfaction”?
James McCann: I think that the plan has been clear for the last 12 months. I think that the understanding of the plan has been clear in the executive board for 12 months, amongst the senior executive group probably for the last six months and really is just starting to become clear to store management, the assistant managers, department managers and all associates. So, we are right at the point where we are explaining the strategy in a way that really engages people and have done that with every associate in our businesses. We’re right at the point where it’s working, so we can tell the story and people buy into it, believe in it and most importantly help us make it happen.
Food World/Food Trade News: And from a measureable point-of-view, when can we expect, in your general opinion, the metrics to improve to the level where you are satisfied and where you can see that satisfaction index and that momentum direction are moving fast enough? Because the numbers have gotten better but are still somewhat behind your peer group. Is there a point where you could say “talk to me nine months from now and I think you will see a further leap forward”?
James McCann: Well, the metrics have been improving. The reality is that our third quarter numbers are strong, both in top and bottom line. The answer to your question is that I hope that I will never be satisfied. It’s a natural part of our character, but I think it is also healthy for a business. I think it is going to build. I think what we are trying to put in place – and what we are now succeeding in putting in place – is a program which will sustain and it will sustain for years and it will get our businesses to being great retailers by the end of the decade. In the middle of 2014, I publicly said, “This is the bottom of the journey. Now from here we are going to build back up.” So far, fortunately that’s happened. It hasn’t happened evenly everywhere. There are some of the businesses that are doing extremely well and performing ahead of expectations, and then we have other businesses where we are still struggling and we’ve got to get going. Answering your question about our report card, I would say that we are very pleased with the progress to date and not satisfied that it is enough going forward.
Food World/Food Trade News: One of the criticisms we’ve heard regarding the many personnel changes at Ahold USA has been that the corporate culture has changed for the worse. Associates and vendors have described the “new” Ahold culture as more autocratic, delegatory and inflexible. Do you think that criticism is warranted?
James McCann: I think it is a really good question. You and I have talked about this a lot over the last two and a half years. I think there is an easy part of this journey, which is the first six months when you put together the new plans and it’s all very exciting working on a new strategy and senior people spend time working with each other. And then there comes a very difficult 12 to 18 months of the journey, which is where a very big organization has to change and that is a very difficult thing to make happen. It’s very difficult for the leader of the organization; it’s very difficult for the leadership team of the organization. That period now is over. I think we have an organization and we have businesses in that organization where the leaderships understand and believe in what we are trying to achieve, and are excited by the journey. We just completed our annual engagement survey. We had 95 percent of associates, including associates in the divisions, Peapod and Ahold USA support organization, complete the survey. That’s an incredible number. That’s 105,000 people who completed the survey and the engagement score went up by plus two percent. What we can see is that in the divisions where we made the structural changes earliest, we’re having enormous positive shifts in three of our divisions where the changes were made the earliest. We now have the evidence that we have more and more of our associates who believe in this journey. As the results come, we’re now doing our very best, maybe we’re not doing well enough, but doing our very best to give the “atta boys,” to celebrate success, to recognize people, to make heroes of the people who are making the changes happen and delivering results. We use a communication tool called “Plus One,” which helps managers and associates acknowledge what is working well and where improvements are necessary to increase the score “plus one” on a scorecard from one to ten. The great thing about our plus-one system is that we can celebrate the stages of the journey. So, if we go from being kind of okay and a six to seven and good, we can celebrate that, but then still say, “Hey, how do we get to eight?” Because we don’t want to be satisfied at being good. Because our journey is to become great.
Food World/Food Trade News: What specifically are you doing to create more associate empowerment beyond the boundaries of what constitutes the Thunder program?
James McCann: Once you’ve got a great plan and your senior leadership team understand it and believe in it, the real question for my team and I was how do we explain that journey to all of our associates and get them to believe in it and be excited by it? Our HR team came up with a very interesting approach to do that, one that I’d not seen before working with a company called Root which involved a “learning map.” We put together an illustration of the strategy that tells the story. The power of this way of doing it is that you have a facilitator that works with 10 people and those associates explore the strategy as part of the learning map – or the strategy map, as we are calling it. We put a huge effort into taking that strategy map. We held our conference in the Fall where we linked together all of our businesses in the U.S. We explained the strategy – myself and the CFO – and we then had 7,400 people take part in learning map sessions in groups of 10 with an associate-facilitator who had previously experienced the map to go through the strategy. So, in six locations and with maps customized for each division, we had 800 tables of 10 and the facilitator going through the strategy exercise. We plus-one our meetings as well, and the scores we got from the associates, both the first part where we explained the strategy and for the learning map exercise – the strategy map exercise – was huge. Our associates loved the fact that we were engaging them in that story, that we were allowing them to explore the strategy of the company. We’ve since taken that to all of the associates in the stores and that the store manager has personally led six to eight sessions in each of their stores to take their long serving full-time associates, the department managers and their assistant managers through that process. All I can say is that we are more than half way through the journey now and the feedback we’ve had is phenomenal. People really seem to understand the strategy. They appreciate that it is being executed in a way specific to their markets. Most of all they seem to think that it is a good strategy that they want to be a part of and hopefully now they are making decisions in their everyday work that help us to achieve that strategy.
Food World/Food Trade News: I am sensing a common theme here. That is, identify what the issue is, come up with a program to deal with that particular issue and once that program starts to develop, the next phase is, let’s provide a little more customization. Is that a fair analysis of how you are approaching the big picture in dealing with some of these challenges?
James McCann: It absolutely is and one of the things that we have done in restructuring the businesses – the divisions and the support structure at Ahold USA – is to try and push decision making down as far as possible to a district team and to a portfolio team. And then have as few links in between those two as possible. We have actually got it down to one link. Our portfolio teams have sales directors from each of the four divisions sitting as part of their management team and then there is just one person – the specialist in each district – before those plans and the communication back up to the office can be flowing freely. I think that’s about as tight as you can get in an organization the size of Ahold USA to be linked closely with the businesses that face into our customers and serve our customers every day, allowing them the freedom to be creative and giving them the responsibility for execution, and that is enormously helpful.
The following questions were gleaned from vendor input:
Food World/Food Trade News: Many vendors have told us that the current merchandising/procurement system is dysfunctional. They assert that category managers are overworked, stretched too thinly and are hampered in their ability to fully execute programs, in part due to their lack of control of retail pricing decisions. Would you agree that the current merchandising infrastructure is broken, and is Ahold’s new “portfolio/open table” model designed to improve communication and execution problems? If so, how?
James McCann: I would answer your question by saying that the structure which was put in place when we brought together the support of Stop & Shop, Giant Landover and Giant Carlisle didn’t function very well. I think that the changes that we made in the district structure and in the portfolio structures over the last nine months are specifically designed to make that process work. The feedback that I’m getting from vendors is that we are on the right track- -Now how do we tell this story to our people?” Or, in the case of brokers, “How do we tell this story to our clients?” We have now put in place full business teams on each of these 16 portfolios. That means around the table with the vice president or the director leading that business, they have not only category managers but they have supply chain, marketing, merchandise support – which is all the pricing, promotions and assortment – they have support from their private label team and support from finance. They have all of those resources available to them. That team has P&L responsibility from market share volume through sales all the way down to EBIT. That is the first time in the AUSA history that we have had one group of people looking at the whole of the P&L. And probably most importantly we’ve asked the four sales directors that look after that product area in the divisions to sit as part of that management team, sort of functionally linked into it so that the divisional needs and the divisional views are built into the strategies as they are designed. They are then taken out and developed and tested in the divisional stores and then they are deployed into the divisions by the sales director and his specialist team. That is fairly new now, but I can tell you that it is really beginning to work. I am starting to hear from the vendors who have been a part of this that they are starting to see a huge shift in their ability to deal with Ahold. That does not mean that the things that we want are any less demanding. What it means, though, is that they can do things with us that they can’t do with others, and they can do them more quickly. Honestly, what I am starting to see now is we are being more demanding of the vendors on speed of things and testing things than they are used to doing them. We are putting vendors under pressure to do more with us rather than us being the blockage in the pipe. I would be disappointed if by the middle of 2016 the vendors have not fully seen the benefit of this structure and they are not really clued in to the fact that at Ahold USA, you can really get stuff done.
Food World/Food Trade News: Another vendor criticism concerns the focus of the category manager. Instead of primarily analyzing data and procuring product and developing plan-o-grams, suppliers complain that many CMs are more like vendors themselves – attempting to sell programs like EYC, direct mail coupons, itemMaster, etc. Additionally, they believe that the CMs are hindered by a system that has too many “guard rails” the presence of which stifles their creativity and flexibility. Do you think those criticisms are justified?
James McCann: Two things. One, if we are growing, all of these things make sense because the volume that the programs deliver and business cases make sense at the vendor end. So, the key thing is that we have to grow our business. The second thing is what I hear most from the vendors is they want to see the overall business plan with Ahold USA and these are parts of that business plan. I think the criticism that is valid is when these things come piecemeal and the sales team is going back to their business to try to justify yet another thing. Where we are trying to get to is that we have business plans with vendors – the EVP of Merchandising, the SVPs and the VPs are involved in planning their businesses with the vendors and these programs form a part of that. Each of these programs needs to, and I believe in most cases do, add value. So, CSM needs to be a program that drives sales and profits for both companies. If it does that, and it is part of a business plan and it is not an ask that comes up in July when budgets were written back in October the year before, then I think the vendors will be very, very supportive. And actually having programs that drive sales is what I think we are all about.
Food World/Food Trade News: Would this be a part of the new open table, everybody gathered around, we can share everything. Put it all in one pile and not have to piecemeal it as you indicated? Do you think that this new model is going to be a difference maker in that regard also?
James McCann: Yes, because I think the teams on the Ahold USA side are going to be joined up. So I don’t think you will have the Peapod team going out and asking, and then the CSM team going out and asking, and then EYC going out and asking. What you will have is the category team and the portfolio team having a plan with the vendor and this will be part of it. For the bigger vendors it will be a senior VP that will own the relationship and for the very biggest vendors it is going to be the chief merchant that will own the relationship.
Food World/Food Trade News: There seems to be some confusion about the details and timelines concerning Project Thunder. Could you give our readers an overview what Thunder’s original objective was, what progress had been achieved thus far, and what overall improvements we can expect Thunder to achieve in the next 18 months?
James McCann: A lot of people ask about Thunder. I was lucky when I came here that Carl (Schlicker, previous AUSA COO) and the previous team put in place a great Fix program that was already delivering transformational cost savings, but if you just have Fix savings, if you’re just squeezing costs out of the business, then that’s very demotivating for our associates. But, if you can explain that Fix gives us the money to be able to invest in Thunder, which we do for our customers, which then drives sales and makes our business healthier and gives us capital to be able to invest in our existing business and buying new businesses, that becomes quite motivating for our teams. The basic way we communicate about our journey is to say we save money through fix, reinvest it back in our customers through Thunder, and then we drive our ID sales which generates leverage effect and throws off more cash which we can use to invest back into the customer again. That’s our business wheel and that’s why you see when we explain the business wheel to associates, we explain it with clear language. Because if you do it with the complicated finance language that’s more complicated, it doesn’t put each and every associate in a position to understand our strategy and what they can do to support it. If we can explain it as Thunder , then people understand that there is going to be wave after wave after wave of both fix and Thunder; what I have found so far is that’s a really simple way that people can get a hold of what our strategy is and then buy into it and help us make it happen which is what we really need.
Food World/Food Trade News: Ahold USA used to be much more aggressive when it came to acquisitions. In recent years, other than some fill-in acquisitions including the recent 25-store A&P purchase, the company seems to have shifted its growth priorities. Now with corporate Ahold and Delhaize about to merge, do you see Ahold USA becoming more aggressive in pursuing other U.S. opportunities? (We know you can’t talk about specifics of the merger agreement, but …) Generally, speaking, what long-term advantages do you see the newly combined company providing to the trade and to consumers in the U.S.?
James McCann: I think what I would say is we’re undertaking a merger of equals with the Delhaize business. That’s an enormous undertaking for a company like Ahold and for a company like Delhaize, I believe. For the foreseeable future, we’re going to have to focus on getting that right, delivering the benefits to our customers, to our associates and to our shareholders from that merger.
Food World/Food Trade News: Ahold has embarked on a very aggressive private label strategy, seeking to make own label sales 40 percent of the company’s total annual revenue. How would you assess progress to date and how would you respond to trade criticism that – other than Nature’s Promise – AUSA’s private label brands have minimal traction, are hindered by inconsistent quality and are negatively impacted by questionable supplier loyalty (too many RFPs, constant switching of suppliers based mainly on price)?
James McCann: When we put together this strategy, we said that there were three areas that we believed could really differentiate our brands and that we wanted to become famous for. One was produce, and I think you can see the investments in produce department at division stores through the Thunder three marketplace. The second was around the whole area of digital retailing, helping customers to plan and execute their shopping trips and then sharing helpful information with customers about their shopping trips. But, the third area was private label. And the reason why private label is so important and can be a differentiator is because it is exclusively available in our stores. That’s the single biggest benefit of private label. I think we’ve made very good progress on private label. Many people think of private label as being the “me too’s” for the national brands, the national brand equivalent . In reality, where we are going to be famous on the private label is around fresh and is around natural and organic. Those will be the two major differentiators in the private label world for us. We will have a fantastic national brand equivalent program, but we will truly differentiate on items that are chilled and frozen, items that are prepared fresh and, we will truly differentiate on items that are natural and organic across the board. Those programs are under way. We touched 40 percent share a couple of periods ago. We are regularly up at a 39 percent share. And, remember that share is a blend of fresh and of grocery. I think that the vendors we work with are seeing that volume growth. Where I think there is justified criticism is that we need to identify strategic vendor partners – where there is real value add on both sides. Each year we add one more year on to the three-year plan. That’s fairly new thinking for Ahold USA. I think it’s fairly new thinking in the U.S. market as well, but it is fairly old thinking in the world of retailing global. So, we are building those partnerships now and I am encouraging the teams to start to get into those relationships, which will be far less transactional. Now, there may be either whole assortments or parts of assortments which are fairly transactional which may even be bid out on an e-tender system because it’s just commodity and it just gets updated every three months.
Food World/Food Trade News: That would work for guaranteed value, because that is what it is. I think the questions beyond that are on the overall, what they believe is a mindset: “Let’s put this out here and if it’s a penny cheaper, we’re in.” You described it, but they are not absorbing that at this point.
James McCann: I’ll take that on board and I’ll redouble our efforts to try to do that because there is a genuine need and a desire to do that. We need to build long-term strategic partnerships. We’re doing that with a number of strategic vendors across our business. It’s a new way of working for us and the teams are learning how to do it. But, it is absolutely something that we’re looking to do in the future.
Food World/Food Trade News: Peapod has had a challenging and transitional year. There have been issues involving productivity and efficiency at your new Jersey City, NJ distribution center and you changed leadership at Peapod, replacing founder and former president Andrew Parkinson with outsider Jennifer Carr-Smith. What needs to happen at Peapod to get the business back on track?
James McCann: 2015 was a difficult year for our Peapod business. I think, honestly, we took too many things on in 2014 – big, big projects – and as a result that destabilized our Peapod business. In particular, the New Jersey facility was an enormous new warehouse with a high degree of automation and with a warehouse management system that we didn’t know that well and it’s had a very difficult opening. Difficult in some ways that weren’t expected, in the mechanical handling aspects which have surprised us and the vendor who provided us the equipment. The great news is we are now seeing those issues behind us. The volume is climbing in that facility. We’ve done some work to examine whether the original business case is possible and the good news is that this confirmed that it is and we still believe in that strategy. We have reaffirmed that we believe in that strategy; and, for that very large urban environment where there is huge demand, that facility can help us to get costs as a percentage of sales down to a place where we can service the New York market in the broader New Jersey market in a much more efficient way. There is a new structure at Peapod and we brought Jennifer Carr-Smith in. I would actually like to publicly thank Andrew Parkinson because he founded the business with his brother and has done a phenomenal job of building Peapod into a superb brand. Jennifer has now picked up the reins and is going to take Peapod on to the next level. That’s the challenge. We want this to be not a small growing business, but a large growing business.
Food World/Food Trade News: What markers should there be to visibly see what that next level is?
James McCann: I think we’ve got to get the growth rate of the Peapod business up to beyond the mid-teens. What we’re seeing with our online businesses in Europe is we’ve gotten them up to the high twenties and low thirties. Our aspiration is that the Peapod business goes back into that explosive growth of an entrepreneurial business and we put behind us some of the supply chain and operational challenges of opening up a new facility. We now have the infrastructure to do what we wanted to do. We’ve probably lost a year because of the challenges of putting together the warehouse management system with the mechanical handling and now we need to drive and start to grow that business again and get that team excited about the fact that they’re winning. They are the largest internet grocery business in the U.S. and we want them to grow quicker than any other grocery internet business in the U.S. so that they grow their lead and don’t lose their lead. It is getting back on track as we speak and I would imagine that by the time this interview is published, it will be back on track.
Food World/Food Trade News: AUSA’s new format program – bfresh – has now been unveiled with its second location about to open in Fairfield, CT. What are your early vibes about the banner and what type of realistic scale is Ahold going to need to make this unit viable and profitable? What needs to happen from a corporate perspective from the company’s U.S. leader to make this thing viable as an investment and a permanent part of the organization in the U.S.?
James McCann: Start with the customer. What we know is that there’s a need for this offer in the customer’s mind. She is looking for solutions for what’s for dinner tonight, she’s looking for an easy shop nearby the house. That is what really drove us to put this innovation team together. The team has done a fantastic job of going from concept to opening the first lab four months later to opening the first store eight months after that – up in Allston (MA) – and the second store six weeks after that in Fairfield (CT). Those are our two research and development centers, if you like. The plan would be to further refine the model, try and figure out which parts of it work, which don’t and change those, try and figure out whether the sales line is where we need it to be, is the profit line where we need it to be and in particular are the shrink and the labor lines where we need them to be in order to see if we have an economic model that works. Our intention would be that through those stage gates we develop something which is really attractive to the customer, which addresses the customer need and that we can make money doing, and then we would begin to deploy it. We want also to be able to focus that team on innovation and deployment of the property pipeline. So we built this thing with some very, very talented people, who are right now really excited – a bit tired but really excited – and we’ve done that for a reason. We put a management team in that business that we believe can take us to the median growth level of the business and run it as an entity, a business within the Ahold USA structure, but separate and distinct from our supermarket businesses.
Food World/Food Trade News: And you think a year from today, if we are talking, there will be a dozen or so bfresh stores open?
James McCann: I think by the end of 2016 there will be six or so open. I think we’ll probably do an early cluster this year, where we’re really still working the research model, and then we’ll do a cluster towards the back end of this year when we test the deployment methodology. At that point you would be in deployment and deploying at scale in order to be able to build the business quickly because what we know is that if we come up with a concept that is good, as always, in our industry there will be many people who try and imitate it.
Food World/Food Trade News: Last question: There’s been a lot of industry change, just even in the 30 months or so that you’ve been here. Using your crystal ball, how would you envision Ahold USA looking two years from now and what might the Northeast retail food industry landscape look like?
James McCann: Where would I like us to be 30 months from now? I’d like the divisions and Peapod to each be well on their way to becoming a great U.S. retailer, where people say that our businesses have become very, very good. I’d like our associates to be seeing the benefits of all the hard work that’s gone into getting us where we are, and seeing our customers recognizing that we’ve become a better value for money and that our division stores have become better places to shop. I’d like our people to be seen in the industry as people who lead thinking and also people who make change happen more quickly than our competitors. And I’d like us to really feel that the strategy that we put together two years ago – that we’re just now starting to see the result of – is well under way and embedded and that the fire of that strategy is burning in a way that is self-sustaining. The beginning part of this journey was getting going. Right now, it’s kind of going. I’d actually like in 30 months to say that I am almost having to hold it back a little bit, because it is excited by the journey and it wants to go faster and faster and the judgement is we can’t go any faster because we might fall over. That to me is what good would look like in 30 months’ time for AUSA and, the divisions it supports.
Food World/Food Trade News: How about industry-wise, landscape-wise?
James McCann: When you asked me the question at the beginning of the interview about what surprised me, I would say that the speed which the Northeast of the U.S. supermarket industry has changed, is frankly, astonishing. I think we’re going to have a very interesting period as Cerberus Safeway shifts from being a private equity company to being a public company. I think we’ve got very strong players in this market that are going to continue expanding – Costco, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s – these are companies that have strong business models and are deploying them. I think in the New York market we’re going to see how the whole change with A&P shakes out. It’s certainly our hope that in 30 months’ time we will be a very strong challenging second in that market from having been a sort of distant equal second today as the A&P shakeout continues. I think it’s a really exciting time. I don’t think it is going to be any easier in 30 months than it is today. I think our businesses are much more ready for the challenges that have come and are going to come over the coming 30 months. I hope that we’re really on the way to becoming one of the great U.S. retailers, because that’s our plan.
Food World/Food Trade News: Thank you.