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Sweetbay In 'Terrific Shape,' Departing CEO Says

Tribune photo by JIM REED

Sweetbay CEO Shelley Broader is leaving the company after transforming it.

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By JEROME R. STOCKFISCH

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 30, 2008

TAMPA - Sweetbay Supermarket announced late Wednesday that chief executive Shelley Broader, 43, would step down June 15 to accept a new, undisclosed job outside the grocery industry. Broader came to Tampa in 2003 from the sibling Hannaford supermarket chain in the Northeast with marching orders to turn around the struggling Kash n' Karry supermarket chain.

The Washington State University alumnus didn't just turn the locally based grocer around. She blew it up and started over.

The transition to Sweetbay has been a success, with the company now No. 5 in Florida with 106 stores and a 2.9 percent market share. It is No. 3 in the Tampa Bay area, with 61 stores and a 12.6 percent market share here.

Broader invited The Tampa Tribune into her office Thursday for some parting words, although she had to rush on to an important appointment - to pick up her son from school. In a wide-ranging interview, Broader shared her thoughts on revamping the chain, being a working mom, the handling of the news that hackers had breached the parent company's transaction network and obtained more than 4 million card numbers, and other topics.

Q. The transition involved a lot more than just putting new signs on stores, right?

A. Oh, heavens, absolutely. The transition from Kash n' Karry to Sweetbay wasn't a name change. The Kash n' Karry brand was retired. The company was retired. Sweetbay was a brand-new company, built from the ground up.

Q. Did you conclude that the Kash n' Karry brand was failing?

A. It was a broken brand. It was an unprofitable company. It had negative brand equity. It had negative consumer images. It had gone through multiple ownership changes and leadership changes and had really lost its brand cachet and its customer base. It was just a tired brand. It required change.

After doing quite a bit of consumer research in the first several months after I formed my team down here, we decided that the Kash n' Karry brand was too badly damaged to be resurrected. But the opportunity for a supermarket chain here was terrific. So we said, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we will utilize the infrastructure of that chain and build a brand-new company on top of it.

Q. What is the state of the organization you are leaving behind?

A. The company is in terrific shape; I'm leaving a wonderful team of leaders here. We're very focused on our consumer, very focused on the brand. The company is performing very well even in this economic downturn, which gives me great hope and great optimism about how Sweetbay will perform when the Florida economy turns around.

Q. The fact that you have to take off in a couple of minutes sort of demonstrates that you have achieved some sort of work-life balance in order to be a successful executive and a successful mom. Is that a companywide trait?

A. I think if you're happy at home, you're happy at work. As important as my job is to me and as important as my company is to me, I have a 9-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son and a husband who are infinitely more important to me. And I think you can integrate your work life and your home life.

My children are very familiar with this office, and I'm very familiar with their school. I think you can bring those together and balance those. You keep people longer and work with them harder if they can have a terrific life at home as well.

Q. Did you feel there were any obstacles being a female executive in the Tampa Bay area?

A. No. On the contrary, Tampa Bay for any executive is an incredibly welcoming community. I think because of the transient nature of Florida and the sort of friendly nature of Tampa, they welcome people into the fold very quickly. In other communities I've worked in, there's kind of a blueblood, or a lifetime residency, and you're either in it or you're not. I found Tampa Bay to be immediately accepting and welcoming to anybody who is concerned about the community.

Q. Regarding the credit-card security breach, do you feel that was handled adequately? There was some concern that consumers weren't notified in a timely manner.

A. When you have the FBI and the Secret Service involved, there are times when you have to do as you are directed to do. In the case of ultimately stopping that person from doing that elsewhere, that had to be part of the role that we played as well. We could have been more self-serving and communicated some things earlier, but my guess is that would have been happening at a lot of other retail organizations in the short run and in the long run had we not proceeded the way we did.

Q. Are you confident that experience has not harmed Sweetbay?

A. Our numbers tell us that our credit card transactions are back to where they were prior. And consumers, although they're always initially disappointed and shocked by that news, they also read in the newspaper every day where that's happening at another retail location, at another ski resort, at another hotel chain. It's a constant battle to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals. In this particular case, we were the first people ever to be "burgled" with this particular style. This was a brand-new weapon for those criminals. It became very important for the agencies to stop them in their tracks and we cooperated fully.

Q. Can you talk about your future?

A. A little. I can't say where I'm going yet. That hasn't been announced yet on the other side of the transaction. I'm staying in the retail business, but out of the food sector.

My time in Tampa has been absolutely spectacular. I'm going to remain tied to the community through my work on the Raymond James board of directors, and certainly continue to root for and patronize Sweetbay as a consumer any time I possibly can. This is a great market to do business in. A market that will recover economically and we'll be positioned to take advantage of that. It's been a wonderful experience here.

Reporter Jerome R. Stockfisch can be reached at (813) 259-8402 or jstockfisch@tampatrib.com.

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