Blake Meek, manager of Lawrence Brothers IGA Supermarket in Roswell, was one of three finalists in his category for the 10th Annual Store Manager of the Year Award awarded by the Food Marketing Institute.
FMI gives awards to store managers in three categories, based on the size of the company. Meek was one of three finalists in Category A, which is for companies with 1 to 49 stores.
Lawrence Brothers District Manager Bob Crumpton nominated Meek for the award.
A press release from FMI says Meek plans store events that attract shoppers from throughout the community. Among the events Meek has scheduled is a First Response Team recognition day, a citywide church bake sale, an open house for the Roswell Chamber of Commerce, a Teacher Appreciation Day “and other events that assist and build relationship with local organizations in the community.”
The release also says Meek made changes in the store based on strengths and weaknesses perceive by his associates in an anonymous employee survey.
“Blake increased sales in eight months by $40,000 a week — a 25 percent increase — just a year after becoming manager of the store,” it concludes.
Meek said the nomination is an honor for him and the people who work in the store.
“FMI is a large company that represents a lot of supermarkets across the United States,” he added.
There were more than 190 submissions for his category, he said.
“It is an honor,” he added. “I’ll tell you I couldn’t do it without all the people that were involved right here in this store that made it happen also.”
He said he believes the store’s community involvement “really made a difference.”
“I think we have one of the friendliest stores in town,” he added.
Store events listed in the nomination are:
• A First Response Team recognition day, a salute to ambulance personnel and police officers who are the first responders to an accident.
“We are starting to do it annually,” Meek said. “I did it the first time last year. We’ve done it for the second time this year. It’s a great day, a lot of fun for kids.”
• A citywide church bake sale.
“We set up tables all throughout the store,” Meek said. “We had a gospel band that was inside the store playing the whole day long. It was just a great day. I think people really enjoyed it.”
• An open house for the Roswell Chamber of Commerce.
“That was a fun time,” Meek said. “The Chamber of Commerce got to come in and got to see some of the changes that we've made to the store,”
• A Teacher Appreciation Day in which “we could recognize the wonderful job that our teachers do here in Roswell,” Meek said.
“I think it goes under-appreciated a lot of the times,” he added. “They do so much in .. helping the future generation.”
In the year and a half he has been manager of Lawrence Brothers, Meek said he has “really, really tried to clean it up a lot.”
“We’ve added enhancements,” he said. “We’ve put a brand new floral department that you see right behind us here and that’s really helped out. We’ve added lots of different, little things … We’ve upped the quality of our produce department and our meat department. We’ve jus improved the whole exterior of the store and got a brand new parking lot that we didn’t have.”
Meek’s wife, Lynn, a floral designer, manages the floral department.
Lynn said she started floral decorating “years and years ago when my kids were little.”
She started doing it part-time and ended up working 12 years in a flower shop in Wisconsin. She and Blake discussed adding a floral department as something they could bring to the store.
She has gift items and potted plants in different decorative containers.
“We do specialty things, whatever you need us to do,” she said. The department also has a cooler in which fresh flowers are kept, and a work area where she does her floral designing.
During October, Lawrence Brothers has a special display in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“We made this little display to make people aware of that,” she said. “We have a mixture of little decorative plants in pinks, lots of pink. We have pink rose bouquets, the pink flowers and specialty bouquets.”
The display also includes cancer-awareness bracelets and chocolate and white cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles on them.
“I also have balloons, pink balloons. I have Mylar balloons with breast-cancer symbols on them,” she added.
Blake Meeks said he has been in the grocery business for 37 years, starting at Albertson’s, where he worked from 1973-87. He then was in business for himself for a while before moving to Wisconsin, where he was operations director for a grocery chain.