Donny Rouse was around 10 years old when he started his career at Rouses Markets. “I would bring grocery carts in from the parking lot and return them to the store for customers to use,” he told me. It was a big deal in his family, a rite of passage. “It meant we were old enough to help.” That first summer, he and his cousin worked a couple days a week, three hours a day. “We knew we weren’t old enough to really do much, but it was pretty exciting to get our feet wet and try a few different things. We were so excited just to be included.”
Not that it was his first glimpse behind the scenes of the grocery business. He grew up in a house across the street from the Thibodaux location, where his dad, Donald, ran the company — which means, really, that he grew up in the stores. Every day after school, he’d drag his backpack to Rouses and plop down on the sofa in his dad’s office. Maybe he’d do his homework, but maybe he would just listen to his father, uncle and grandfather talk about business (which was its own kind of education).
“I learned something every day,” said Donny. The main thing he learned, which still guides his work as the third-generation CEO of Rouses Markets, is to take care of the customers. “You’ve got to provide good customer service. You want to keep the customer happy.”
Not long after learning to corral the parking lot carts, Donny’s dad let him work in the meat department, bagging chickens. It was messy work, but that was okay with Donny, because it was work, which — especially to a kid his age — was exciting in its own way. Later, it was a pretty big deal when he was finally allowed to help bag groceries. “You had to learn how to do it, and do it properly,” Donny said. At the time, a Rouses employee had been named Best Bagger in the Country in a contest held by the National Grocers Association, which added a competitive, almost glamorous aspect to the job, especially for a boy just beginning to learn the ropes. “We only had paper bags back in those days and it was pretty exciting. Man, you just wanted to get it right. It was an art.”
Anyone who’s ever grown up in a family business knows that the lessons of life and the lessons of work become intertwined. It’s not that work is life; it’s just that the two in some way become inseparable in childhood memories. Donny’s grandfather shaped his work ethic. “He showed up to work every day in his overalls and hat — I can still see it in my head — and he did everything from working operations to doing electrical and plumbing and contracting. Nothing was beneath him, nothing.” You were as likely to see him on a bulldozer as you were to see him stocking a shelf. “His mindset was: if I can do it, let me just go ahead and do it. You know, that stayed with me. To this day, if something needs to be done, I do my best to take care of it, and I think of him.”
Meanwhile, he watched his dad work, and man, you didn’t do that and not learn to be passionate. “That man has so much pride in the business. You’ve never seen a man enjoy his job more than my dad. You know, when he was still working, he could tell you the retail price and cost for every single item in a grocery store. And, even more important, he always wanted our team members and customers to be happy.” Donny also learned from his dad to move quickly, and make hard decisions. “It’s not always the right decision, but you need to make it and move forward. If you get it wrong, you can change your mind and adjust course. But you need to keep moving forward.”
That, he said, is one of the big advantages that family-owned stores like Rouses Markets have over the big national chains — and that directly benefits the customers. “We have to be nimble. A lot of these giant grocery chains that come into our communities, they have so many people that have to approve a process or approve a change, that it takes them months to make decisions and do the right thing.” Rouses, being family owned, doesn’t have that bureaucracy. “We can make the calls that help the customer, and we can do it quickly. We always do what we think is the right thing — but if we’re wrong, we’re fast to admit it, and we’ll fix it.” A lifetime in the business has allowed Donny to develop a certain intuition, which definitely helps guide his decisions.
Another thing that people who’ve grown up in a family business know is it takes a lot of hours; even when you’re not in the office, your mind might still be working on some problem affecting some aspect of the family business — in Donny’s case, any one of the 66 Rouses stores across the Gulf South. I asked him if his wife, Kara, had any idea what she was getting herself into when they started dating.
“Yeah,” Donny laughed, “the job takes a lot of hours. But she was running her own business at the time we met, so she understood what it means to run a family business, and the hours it takes to be successful. But we talked a lot about it, and still do. We have to continue working hard, long hours, you name it, to continue to be successful in our business, of course, but also successful in providing our customers with the best products and services we can find.”
He feels a particular urgency to get things right, because any multi-generational business can falter the further you get from the day it was founded. “You know, everyone says the third generation is the one that’s going to mess up the family business,” Donny said. “And certainly, many people have told me that over the years! But that’s not an option for me. We’re not going to fail. We’re going to be successful and continue thriving as a company. I feel that way, and so do my cousins in the business, my dad, the whole family: We feel that way because we’re doing the work, building the careers, raising up team members, adapting to conditions whenever they arise but most of all, keeping the customer and the community front and center. We’re going to be a successful company for a long time.”
Those team members are the lifeblood of Rouses. “Without our team, we couldn’t be successful,” he told me. “We have 7,000 team members who count on me to make the right decisions to grow the company and keep moving it forward. So I need to make sure that we’re taking care of them. Our team members are constantly voting us Best Place to Work in the United States, and that is a very proud achievement for the company, one that we value highly.”
Rouses Markets spends a lot of time helping team members cultivate careers rather than just holding the same jobs indefinitely. “We want to make sure we give our team members the right training that they need to be happy and to thrive in their careers — not just jobs, but careers.” After being hired, each new team member is paired with a current team member for several days to learn the ins and outs of Rouses, go through team orientations, and learn the day-to-day job requirements.
“We also created a program called Rouses University for our team members,” he explained. “For instance, if you’re working in the bakery department, we have online courses to help you understand that job better, and there are different levels of courses. As your career at Rouses advances, you have the opportunity to learn more things about the bakery (or whatever department you’re in or want to be in), and study up so that you’re more knowledgeable. That way, when the time comes for you to get that promotion — to become assistant department manager, say, or even department manager, or move into different departments or any level of management you aspire to — we help make sure you’re ready and equipped for success.”
It’s not just the employees casting Best Of votes for Rouses every year. The company has been voted Best Supermarket in every community that it serves, and gets that vote almost every year. “It’s a huge deal for us as a company, and for our team members, to know that our customers appreciate what we’re doing,” said Donny. “They’re enjoying shopping with us, they recognize we’re on the right path, that we’re doing what’s right. Let’s keep moving forward. We’re always asking ourselves, what can we do different so that we can continue achieving those expectations our customers have for us.”
And word of mouth spreads. Customers, he said, are always asking him to build a location in their neighborhoods. “We’re always looking, always studying markets and visiting them. But we don’t want to expand just for the sake of expanding. We want it to be a good fit for the community. When we find the right location, it’s the right location!”
That speaks to one of the secrets to the success of Rouses, he said: staying true to the company’s local roots, and true to the communities it serves. “I always say, you’re either local or you’re not. And we are local. There’s a lot of people who pretend to be local, but we are the local Gulf Coast grocery store. We are the one that the local farmers and fishermen come to sell their products to, because they know we’re passionate about it. We’re not just going to throw it in an ad and hope for the best. We’re actually going to sell it.” For Donny, the company’s relationships with its suppliers, with its team members, with its customers, with its communities — they’re all personal.
“We have many handshake deals with suppliers rather than written contracts. We really get to know the farmers and the fishermen and the manufacturers we work with, and we do it on a personal basis. It can’t just be a paper relationship.” Rouses trusts its partners, he explained, and they have to be able to trust Rouses, so that everyone can continue growing together. “You know, if a farmer has a bad year and the crop is not that good, they need to trust that Rouses will still be there to support them, and take everything in that we can, because we want to be able to work with them again the following year and the one after it.”
Because when you get right down to it, Donny said, it’s all about community. “Community is who we are. That’s our culture. When we expand into areas, we’re supporting the local schools, sponsoring the local sports teams, engaging the local community — because community is our culture. We hire local when we open stores. They learn the Rouses culture, and we learn the local culture of those markets.” The nice part about Rouses being based all along the Gulf Coast is that our communities have a lot in common. “You know, what we eat is very similar, the sports teams we cheer for are very similar, our love of family and cooking and celebration, all very similar. I know that we are privileged to be from here, and I can’t wait to keep growing to serve even more people in our Gulf Coast communities in the future.”
