David Politz
Associated Grocers President and CEO David Politz describes his company as “small” and “nimble.”
Since its founding in 1950, the Baton Rouge-based company has kept its mission simple: Serve independent grocers. It provides support including procurement and accounting to more than 200 local retailers in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.
Politz said the company’s small size allows it to react quickly to industry challenges, but now, Politz has his sights set on something bigger.
“As far as I’m concerned, I want to dominate the Gulf Coast,” he said. “I want AG to be the wholesaler of choice for anybody doing business along the Gulf Coast.”
Politz officially took over as the head of Associated Grocers in April, after 40 years with the company. He started working for Associated Grocers part-time when he was a student at LSU and rose up through the corporate ranks. After spending the previous five years as senior vice president and chief information officer, he was named interim president and CEO in November 2024, when Manard M. Lagasse Jr. stepped down.
In this week’s Talking Business, Politz discusses plans to grow the company, establishing the Associated Grocers brand and navigating industry challenges.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What have been your priorities in the first few months as CEO?
When all this first happened, we were in the middle of a major system upgrade and putting automation in the warehouse. We were going into the holiday season and the last thing we want to do is have business disruption during the busiest time of year. I was involved in that from the IT side, and we had to see that through before we could do anything else.
Any new leader coming in, you have to kind of establish your style, what you want to do differently. There were some things I definitely wanted to do differently than what we were doing before. I value debate. I don’t want everybody in the room nodding their heads and agreeing with me, because if you’re agreeing with me, we’re in trouble. I don’t have all the answers in, but collectively, I think we can solve most problems.
The third thing we’re really still working on, but I feel, is incredibly important, is establishing the Associated Grocers brand. Historically, AG has always just been kind of behind the scenes. We’ve always wanted our retailers in the spotlight. And rightly, they should be. But things have changed. There are a lot of competitors in our marketplace now, and the retailer has a lot of choices as to who’s going to supply them, and so we have to have a presence. We have to have an identity.
You said you want to dominate the Gulf Coast. How exactly will you do that?
I believe right now, very clearly, that what we do, we do better than anyone else. I firmly believe that. I think a big part of being able to grow this thing is establishing AG as its own brand and having that identity in the marketplace. Getting even more involved in these communities is part of it and actively recruiting new members, which we’ve done in the past, but we’re applying much more resources and such to that. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail there. I want people to know who we are before we even walk in the door to talk to you.
This is a time of high food prices. What has been Associated Grocers’ response to this so far and what more needs to be done?
Ever since COVID, everything’s changed. Everything’s been different. The supply chain got extremely challenging for a long time. I think we’ve done much better than most as far as overcoming the supply chain challenges to make sure that our retailers have product when they when they need it.
Some of the rollbacks on tariffs would be helpful. There are things that are out of our control. Cocoa is imported. Coffee is imported. There’s a lot of produce that’s imported, and then a lot of supplies and containers that are used in packaging that’s used are all imported. We’ve just absorbed higher costs on everything, as everybody has since COVID. Many things have tripled in price, and so it’s been tough for business in general, tough on the consumer in general, right? We’re always looking at additional areas where we can make money, save money, squeeze money, so that we don’t go up on a cost of goods to the retailers, so important that we keep our retailers competitively priced.
We do our own freight management now. All our inbound freight, we’ve got somebody that coordinates and negotiates all of that. Anytime we’re in an area making a delivery, we want to pick something up and bring it back so that we’re not coming back with an empty truck. We want to make sure that those miles are full of products, really optimizing all of those opportunities is making a big difference for us.
We have not done any kind of price raising whatsoever since COVID. In fact, we’ve cut costs. It’s made things lean, but it’s the right thing to do, and we can’t lose sight of our why we’re here. We’re here to service those communities where our retailers are. We are not a profit-driven business. We’re not here to pad our bottom line and make as much as we can. We’re here to serve those communities.
