Hy-Vee (West Des Moines, IA)
How Hy-Vee Stays Young asks whether the success of the 77-year old West Des Moines, Iowa-based Hy-Vee is due to employee ownership, staying on top of the trends, or marketing:
"With annual sales topping $5.3 billion, it ranks among the top 20 supermarket chains and the top 35 private companies in the nation…"Hy-Vee has over 52,000 employees, and 22,000 of them are direct owners," he says. "People are allowed to share in the success of the company, not only economically but in having knowledge about how the company runs. There's real pride here, and it helps everyone do a better job."
Hy-Vee is currently ranked #2 on the NCEO Employee Ownership 100.
Leesburg Pharmacy (Leesburg, VA)
The Corner Drugstore, Barely Clinging to Health discusses Leesburg Pharmacy and the struggles the Leesburg, Virginia pharmacy faces in competing with the larger "chain-store" pharmacies:
"There are nine chain-store pharmacies within two miles of Garvin's -- not only Rite Aid and CVS but also at Wal-Mart, Target and grocery stores. They make up for losses on drugs by selling cartloads of higher-margin items. Garvin's pharmacy, meanwhile, barely breaks even, with six full-time pharmacists and a stable of technicians to provide the specialized services that keep drawing customers. Garvin said the pharmacy's salaries fall within the range for community pharmacists in the region -- $85,000 to $95,000 a year.
"We could do what the chains do -- cut staff," she said. "But we couldn't live with what that would do to our customer service. So as a management team, we have chosen to keep the staff and face the financial consequences." The employees, who are buying the pharmacy through an employee-stock-ownership plan, take lower salaries than their counterparts at chain stores."
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