Milking It: An Interview with Stew Leonard, Jr.

RL: What are your plans for Stew Leonard’s?

SL: Well, right now, we have four food stores and seven wine stores. We’re expanding the food and the wine, but we’re not just growing to grow. We don’t have to expand for any reason. We’re not public, so we just want to continue growing at the rate our people can grow internally. I don’t think it’s any more fun being big; I like it small. I like to know everybody. I like to walk around the stores. I like to visit the farms. I get a kick out of that. I don’t want to get it so big that I’m in some boardroom somewhere for four hours going over reports.

RL: Do you have a succession plan?

SL: Our family business person recommended we start a board of advisors. So, we did that. We do a lot with family business planning because I have a brother and two sisters and we have 13 of the next generation, but the odds are against us to keep this going [as a family business]. There is a gap between the generations—the kids are in their early 20s, and I’m in my early 50s. If you look ahead 10, 15 years when I might want to start easing off a little bit, they’re only going to be in their 30s. They won’t be really ready. What we have to do is look around the organization of people and ask, “Who would be qualified to fill in that gap, and what training do they need now so they could, hopefully, be ready at some point?”

RL: Have you had challenges in adapting to the “Y” generation of workers?

SL: Although we have a lot of people that have been here 20, 30 years, this new group coming in is kids. A lot of them are under-25s like my kids. I plugged the CD in that my 22-year-old daughter listens to and I felt like whipping it out the window — my ears! But, hey, if that’s what the under-25s want to listen to, maybe the music in the cafeteria’s got to change. Now we’ve got Frank Sinatra playing in there and the kids are like, “Who’s Frank Sinatra?"