Retailer Icon Stew Leonard Sr. Dies At 93

Stew Leonard, the retail guru who turned an ordinary grocery store into a legendary retail experience, passed away on April 26, 2023, at age 93. Yet, his legacy and impact on the customer experience world continue to live on.

Some of you may not know who Stew Leonard was, so let’s start with a question that describes the Stew Leonard retail experience: What happens when you cross a grocery store with Disneyland?

The answer: You get a regional chain of seven supermarkets—Stew Leonard’s—operating in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, which, according to Wikipedia, is recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” honored by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! as “The World’s Largest Dairy,” and has earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest sales per square foot of selling space. You also get incredibly high customer satisfaction ratings that bring customers back again and again.

Those high customer ratings come, in part, from Leonard’s customer service rules, and there are just two of them:

1. The customer is always right.

2. If the customer is ever wrong, reread rule No. 1.

These rules were Leonard’s philosophy, and he believed in them so much that he had them etched into a three-ton rock that sits outside the store. He also believed in creating a customer experience that was unlike any other in the dairy or grocery store industry.

In 1983, The New York Times featured an article about the store, referring to it as “a Disneyland dairy store.” Leonard’s role model was the one and only Walt Disney, to whom he refers as “the greatest marketing genius ever.” His influence on Leonard is evident. You can’t ignore the Wow factor that customers experience when shopping. There are balloons for children, animals to pet (weather permitting), musical entertainment and much more.

Beyond the Disney-like experience and customer service rules that are etched in stone, there are many other lessons any business can learn and use. Here are just a few:

If You Want Happy Customers, Start With Happy Employees. In the 1983 NYT article, Leonard said, “We want people who work here to feel they are part of something special.” The chain started with just eight employees and had grown to 350 “members,” which was how Leonard referred to his team. Today that number has soared to more than 3,000. That doesn’t happen unless you focus on employee satisfaction. In turn, these employees/members are more engaged at work and focused on putting smiles on their customers’ faces.

Sell What Customers Want: In the beginning, Stew Leonard’s store sold only dairy products. Over the years, that expanded into many other items typically found at a grocery store. But, because the focus was always on quality and popularity, the selection was limited compared to other major grocery stores. According to Reference for Business, any item selling fewer than 1,000 units per week would be removed from the shelves. According to Stew Leonard Jr., “By focusing on turnover, profit comes.” While some customers complained about the limited selection, sales per square foot were approximately five times the average grocery store.

Get Feedback and Act On It: On any given day, Leonard would walk through the aisles and talk to his customers. You can’t understand what your customers experience if you aren’t “in the trenches” talking to them. Suggestion boxes were easily found in his stores. Focus groups helped define progress, as Leonard and his team listened to what customers wanted. These conversations and suggestions proved to be a catalyst for growth and incredible levels of customer satisfaction.

Leonard retired from running the family business in the 1990s, after he and the supermarket chain survived a tax fraud scandal. While he stayed on as chairman emeritus, his son Stew Leonard Jr. took over and continues to run the business on the same principles his father started in 1969. As a business leader, if you are ever in the vicinity of a Stew Leonard’s store, you must visit, not to buy a carton of milk, but to experience how a typical business can break tradition and become an iconic brand that others—in any industry—can hope to emulate.