HARITOS, Sam - Australian Convenience Foods (May/June 2008)

Face Time
Champion
of the
Channel
A conversation with Sam Haritos
Some readers will be aware, but many
may not, that much of today’s successful
C-Store plano‐grams and tactical category
management, while the result of many
people’s input, have occurred due to the
significant contribution of one man — Sam
Haritos — now P&C National Business
Manager with Australian Convenience
Foods (ACF).
Sam has been involved in various
businesses making and delivering
sandwiches off and on for more than 40
years. Today, that means working at ACF
which makes about 200,000 rounds each
week in five factories, and delivering them
fresh every day to some 3,000 stores — a
long way from helping out in the family
milk bar. Sam’s family came to Australia
from the Greek island of Lemnos in 1954.
“We were £10 immigrants, and our first
home was the Bonagilla migrant hostel,”
recalled Sam. “My Dad and some of the
other men moved to Melbourne to find
jobs and then the families followed. We
lived in Lygon Street, Carlton, not far from
where the famous cafés and restaurants
are today.”
Beginnings….
Sam’s parents worked in factories until
they had saved enough money to buy
some land and build a house in the
suburbs, but the vibe of the inner city
drew them back to Carlton where, in 1960
when Sam was 10 years old, they bought
an old unoccupied shop with an attached
dwelling. Although his Dad came from a
long line of share farmers, before leaving
Lemnos he had owned a café. When the
family had saved enough for the stock and
fittings, they opened a milk bar and mixed
business.
“Convenience retailing has changed a lot
since then,” said Sam. “We bought a lot of
grocery items in bulk. Salt and sugar came
in 120-pound calico bags. One of my jobs
after school was to fill 2-pound bags, tape
them down and put them on the shelf. My
other job was making deliveries on my push
bike. A few years later, we moved to a large
shop and dwelling in Commercial Road,
Prahran.”
This was 1964 when St Kilda Road was
developing into a commercial precinct.
However, the new office buildings did not
have their own cafés and sandwich bars.
Grab the opportunities
“My brother and I could see an opportunity,”
said Sam. “We had some flyers printed by a
friend and took them round to all the offices.
The workers would call us in the morning
with their orders and we would deliver their
sandwiches and cakes/buns at morning tea
time and lunchtime. My brother did most
of the work in the mornings because I was
still at school, but I would distribute flyers
in the afternoons. We created a profitable
category.
“I liked mechanical drawing at school
and in other circumstances I might have
become an architect. All the family worked
www.c-store.com.au | Australian Convenience Store News | May/June 2008

in the shop, and the focus was on family
and the business.”
Sam’s love of design and years of retail
experience eventually found a creative
outlet some years later when Sam was one
of the first in the industry to experiment
with tactical C-Store category layouts.
Despite his parents’ efforts, after growing
up in the milk bar business Sam was not
that keen on staying and working in the
family business. When he left school, he
worked in the Department of Trade and
Industry.
“I was only there for 12 months,” said
Sam. “It was clear that promotion was not
based on merit, and I could not see much
of a future there. I went back to work in the
family store.
“Dad had always been a bit of a risk
taker, but he had faith in himself. He also
understood retailing. He knew how to look
after customers. We decided to branch
out into a supermarket; partly in the hope
of more reasonable working hours. After
selling the Prahran store we bought another
milk bar in St Kilda which my Mum and
sister ran and we also purchased a small
‘Foodland’ supermarket in outer suburban
Eltham that Dad and I managed. By then,
my older brother Con had moved back to
Lemnos where he now has a BP service
station. Even though supermarket hours
were shorter, we still ended up doing long
hours with all the ordering and paper work
to do.
“In 1970 we bought a bigger supermarket
in McKinnon where there was strong
competition from the big supermarket
chains. We built the business by focussing
on customer service. In those days, families
only had one car and on the Thursday or
Friday the husband would leave the car
at home and take the train - and the wife
would do the weekly shop. We would
pack groceries in cardboard boxes and
carry them out to the cars, chatting with
customers and getting to know them. You
did not get that sort of service at the big
supermarkets.”
Sam and Judy (they would later marry)
decided to get some travelling in before
they settled down.
While living in London in 1974, Sam
worked in a sandwich shop at Waterloo
Station churning out sandwiches at a
frenetic pace. It sometimes seemed as if the
entire population of London was queuing
along the sidewalk waiting for such exotic
delights as salmon and cream cheese; back
home, ham cheese and tomato was still the
norm.
After nearly a year in Europe, they came
home and needed to find work. Sam took
on a supermarket manager’s job with
Woolworths.
“It was what I knew,” said Sam. “And, I
needed a job. I was also good at it because
I had such a deep understanding of the
business. But, after a couple of years I
wanted a new challenge and was keen to
see the business from the supply side.”
As is often the way with these things,
while walking down the street Sam bumped
into a former Uncle Ben’s rep, Terry
Shannon, who had become state manager
for the recently set up Mars Confectionery.
Terry encouraged him to apply for a newlycreated
reps’ jobs.
Mars had just set up in Australia a couple
of years earlier and they were looking for
full-time confectionery sales people to
develop their supermarket business. Terry
put in a good word for me, and I started
with Mars in 1979.
Terry’s faith in Sam was more than
vindicated when he won Salesman of the
Year in his first year and again the next
year based on only a few months’ sales!
Sam worked through a number of account
management roles and stayed with Mars
for a total of 15 years.
In 1991, as Mars’ National Account Manager, Traditional, Sam Haritos was interviewed for
Shell’s Shop Talk - seeking his views on how to increase turnover through the use of a
good confectionery layout. (Image reprinted from Shell Shop – Shop Talk Vol 2 no 3)
New role creates win-win
“Mars was a great company to work for,”
recalled Sam. “They would encourage you
to take on new challenges. I was given the
opportunity I needed when they made
me New Business Development Manager
for the route trade. Part of the role was to
revamp a couple of stores to test different
confectionery layouts.
We redesigned and refitted stores in
Bendigo and Dandenong. I got a lot of
satisfaction from helping store owners who
were much like my parents. They were so
focussed on the everyday running of the
business that they did not have the time to
sit back and rethink a single category.
Mars paid for the new category layout
and both stores were so successful that
we published the results, and through
similar exercises with the then fledging P&C
industry I created my own role of petrol and
convenience channel account manager.”
That was the late 1980s when C-Stores
were just starting to evolve from milk bars
and service station shops. One of Sam’s
earliest accounts was Caltex.
“I recall one couple in a Caltex service
station in Nunawading,” said Sam. “In
conjunction with Convenience Store News
we redesigned the layout of the store and
as a result the store doubled its sales. They
were thrilled with the results. This is what
gave me the buzz — the genuine win-win
where the retailer’s total business improved
and the company I worked for achieved a
sustained increase in sales. Both received
long-term benefits. I could never have done
this working for a supermarket chain.”
The innovations developed by Sam
changed forever the way confectionery is
retailed in C-Stores. Sam went on to do the
same with ice-cream (six years with Peter’s)
and juice two years with Berri).
Always in need of a challenge, Sam then
spent some time developing the hospitality
market for a small soy snack food company
and, when ACF approached him in 2003 to
help develop the fresh food category in the
P&C channel, it was an irresistible offer.
“Fresh food is a growth category with
enormous potential,” said Sam. “It is also
a challenging category because it is so
different. The main business is in making
and moving fresh sandwiches. This is a
product that consumers can go home and
make themselves, and they don’t appreciate
what it takes to deliver a fresh sandwich
commercially; nor do many retailers for that
matter.
“You can’t have full shelves 24 hours a
day every day, and there will always be some
wastage. It’s a risky business because you
always have too few or too many. That being
said, over time consumers will increasingly
expect to find quality fresh food in the
channel. We are launching a new range of
products that emphasize a ‘healthier’ offer,
including a range of packs with either a mini
baguette or a wrap with an apple.”
“I still get a buzz working with the channel
and helping retailers,” said Sam. “I am proud
to have been able to influence how retailers
merchandise their products to sell more.”
ADVICE TO RETAILERS:
• The fresh food category
will continue to grow and is
establishing credibility with
consumers in the convenience
channel. Within five years, it will
be widely accepted that you can
buy quality fresh food in a C-Store.
The better the fresh food offer,
the better the chance of attracting
more customers to your store.
• Retailers need to embrace and
effectively manage the category.
This is more than having stock on
the shelf. The appearance of the
fresh food area is very important,
and it must be kept clean and tidy.
Customers might drop a bit of
coffee but they won’t clean it up
– the retailer has to make sure it is
kept clean.
May/June 2008 | Australian Convenience Store News | www.c-store.com.au