Electronic Shelf Labels & Digital Transformation at Leevers Foods | Live From SpartanNash

Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitalk retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you live from the Simbi and Omnitalk podcast studio at the Spartan Nash Conference in beautiful and sunny Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Anne, let's do it.

And we are pleased to kick off our coverage today with Doug Hyland.

Doug is the GM at Levers Foods.

Doug, welcome to omnitalk.

Oh, thanks a lot.

Appreciate being here.

Doug, I'd love for you to start by giving us a little bit of your background and what your role is at Leavers.

Well, background, like a lot of the people you're going to find here at this show, started in my dad's store at nine years old.

Okay.

Restacking pop bottles, stuff like that back in the day.

And been in the business my whole life.

So I've gone anywhere from working for Independence, working for corporates, worked for Nash Finch back in the day.

Spartan Nash.

I've been district manager.

I've been an account support specialist for the warehouse side.

And then I started working with Levers Foods five years ago as their director of operations, and been doing it a long time.

And tell our audience about Levers.

Where are you located?

Levers Foods is based out of Devil's Lake, North Dakota.

Third generation grocery store founded in 1938 by Norm Levers.

We have nine stores right now, eight of them in North Dakota, one in Minnesota, and we have three Sandalwood liquor stores.

Wow.

Yeah.

So you've done all the jobs and you have locations in all the Midwest states?

Pretty much.

Yep.

Keeps you hopping.

Doug, as a former district manager myself, I always have to ask, what was your record for the number of miles you put on your car in one year?

My per.

Well, of course, was with Nash at the time, it was our personal cars, but it was 50.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Two years.

I had 110,000.

Oh, my God, man, you got me beat.

Mine was 30, so you got me beat.

You got to realize some of these stores are four hours.

Oh, yeah.

Away from home.

I had some.

I had some, too, but, yeah, not even that.

That's a lot of miles, man.

More power to you.

Wow.

Respect.

All right, well, so.

So.

Progressive Grocery, they named Levers one of its outstanding independent grocers for 2025.

Tell us about what.

Why was that?

What stands out about them in your mind?

Well, they look at several things, but if I remember right on this one, there were.

There were a few things they talked about to us privately that really didn't make the article.

Okay.

Yeah.

They are talking about our commitment to electronic shelf labels and the technology we were in, the effort we were putting behind that.

But they also talked to us.

We have an in house training we're doing with what we call development training with assistant managers and people we feel that can work into that role to try and create our own managers of the future.

And that's been key because we've had a lot of our manager been there 35 to 40 plus years retiring and we've had a lot of turnover as far as top talent.

But we've been able to create it from in house.

And because those guys were there that long, there hasn't been a need for training up to that point because there was no upward movements.

Right, right, right, right.

And that's always a key challenge.

Right.

In running too is making sure you got the right staff.

Because it is a challenge.

Talk about that.

Well, you know, in this day and age it's getting harder and harder all the time.

Less people want to work.

And honestly this isn't the paying job it used to be when I started in and this was a career that you got into anymore.

We're kind of on the lower edge of the pay scale so it's harder to keep these people going.

And that's one of the reasons we got into the electronic shelf labels is because we're able to actually reduce some of those hours.

And while we're not trying to reduce staff, what our thought for the future is is that as we reduce some of these things, another one is meat departments.

You can't hire a meat cutter anymore.

Right.

You know, but they have phenomenal precut meat programs going.

So again, so you take some of those hours that aren't that you typically would use, you don't replace them.

The deal isn't, you know, the whole goal is not to replace do staff.

Yeah.

But to take those dollars and actually pay the staff.

You have more.

Right.

For the retention down the road.

Right.

Redeploy it.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Well, Doug, what brings you to the Spartan Nash conference?

I've been to these for several years.

I had a feeling.

Tell us, tell, tell us beginners.

What, what's so spectacular about this event and why we need to check it out?

Well, for, for retailer like me, obviously the first thing I look for is the new items.

What's going on, what I haven't seen.

But it's our, it's our chance to meet with the vendors.

Biggest thing is normally our best buys of the year.

Ok.

Right here.

Okay.

There's, you know, back in the day, you used to do a lot of negotiating.

That's pretty much done for you these days.

But no, it's just, it's a phenomenal way to, to get a chance to talk to these guys.

It used to be we have vendors in our stores all the time right now.

It's a rarity, really.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's just, again, how the business has changed.

Yeah.

This is our chance to talk to them about issues we're having and hopefully get them better.

At least get their, their attention to it, see what they can address and.

What they can't get some face.

I mean, why is that?

Is the industry moved to become more centralized in their approach to dealing with.

Everything, or it's like everything else cutting costs?

Yeah.

You know, and of course, you know, back in the day, you didn't have the Internet, you didn't have the ability.

Communication tools.

Yeah, right, right.

So that brings up an interesting point too.

So, like, and, and you sound like, for the most part, you guys are a very technologically advanced retail organization.

You know, with the fact that you deployed electronic shelf labels in your organization, how do you keep up with the pace of technological change in the grocery industry?

What have you found that works for you?

You know, that's a tough question, really, because in our situation, most of our stores are very rural.

A lot of technology that would really work for a more metropolitan area is not gonna work for us.

One of the things that we brought in and we were recognized, that was part of the recognition too, was we'd brought in store, online, ordering, delivery, that type during COVID That was huge for us and it was huge for our customers.

Since COVID we've actually taken that program away.

It just really dribbled down to nothing.

Okay.

And like I said, I know you were just talking on one of the previous podcasts about the ability to bring groceries to your house.

You know, where you're from, that's a bigger deal.

Where we're from, it's not.

Right.

We still do delivery, but you get into the fact that those programs cost so much.

Right.

That you know, we've gone back to the old fashioned call in with your order and look, take it that way.

Right, right.

And it makes sense.

That's also the grocery stores kind of the center of the community and kind of the place where people are going to do other things besides just shop for groceries.

Well, what excites you most, Doug, about what you have left to do in your role?

The second half of this year we're.

Still, we've still got five stores, four stores.

I'm sorry, that we have to get ES sales in.

We're working on that.

We're also in that very horrible spot where we have to replace all of our front end systems.

Yeah.

And so.

Yeah, we're really working on that.

The last thing then is we're going with RSA America app for advertising and.

Oh, are you?

Yeah.

Okay.

We'll be eliminating print ad shortly and going to that.

So a lot of work in the background going on that.

So like I said, it's just hop, hop, hop from one to another.

Doug, I'm curious, what has the, what have the perspectives been both of first, I would say with the ESLs and your employees and kind of the movement over to that.

What has the feeling been from them?

And then when you talk about getting rid of printed coupons and going into fully digital, what do you anticipate the customers will say about that?

What we found for the employees so far, it's been phenomenal.

It's been great.

We've heard that across the board.

It really has.

We have heard mixed results from other companies on the ESLs.

Oh, really?

We actually have had phenomenal response to it.

But one of that was talking to a customer who had already gone to it and they were talking about how the customer did not know what these meant, what the tags meant, which seemed funny because you just spent months designing these.

Well, it's obvious what it means.

Well, to us it is, but to them it's not.

Okay.

So we had this conversation about two weeks before we launched it.

So we immediately realized we have to educate and that's what we did.

So we, we got bag stuffers and flyers and signs throughout the store stating exactly what each sign means.

And it, it made all the difference in the world.

So that's great.

It's been really good.

And I assume can carry that through then too for printed coupon or when you're moving from printed to digital coupons.

Yes, I.

The whole thing again, it's all going to be about the education, letting them know where it's at.

Right.

We got a lot of ways we kind of want to twist that program a little bit is on how to, how to spice it up.

So we're excited to get started.

More opportunity now.

That's great.

Excellent.

Every good merchant does, Doug.

Every good merchant does.

Right?

Yeah.

You got to do it your own way.

Right.

So for sure.

Well, thank you so much.

Thanks for, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for kicking off our coverage here again, Doug Hyland.

Ann and I are going to be here all day from the Simbi and Omnitalk podcast studio at the Spartan Nash Conference at Grand Rapids, Mission, Michigan.

Not Mission, Michigan.

So until next time, and be careful out there.