Anthony Hucker: The people business

“Putting the customer at the centre of every single decision you make is absolutely imperative,” explained Anthony Hucker. 

It’s an approach that has paid off. Hucker is President and Chief Executive Officer of Southeastern Grocers, one of the largest conventional grocers in the United States, which operates three brands throughout five states.   

South Wales-born Hucker can trace his client-centric philosophy back to the retail marketing degree he completed at Manchester Met in 1989.  

Hucker said: “What was attractive to me was that the course was four years and provided such an effective balance of real-work experience and classroom theory. 

“If we were doing, for example, a lecture on HR, we learned about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but then we’d go to Leeds and meet the ASDA regional HR management and say, ‘What happens in the real world?’” 

He continued: “Then we’d come back and deliver a presentation, and we were graded as a team to learn accountability.” Hucker added: “That whole model was so applicable to me as an individual, but more importantly, the power of going far as a team, and it eventually became the foundation of my career.” 

The power of a placement

The first of two industrial placements took place at a wine merchant, where he transformed the fortunes of a southwest London branch. It was featured on FTSE 100 company Imperial’s published report, and the turnaround story was presented to the board of directors. Hucker was only 19 years old at the time. 

Hucker explained: “They were going to close the store. 

“I was the first placement student for the company, and I don’t think they knew what to do with me, so they gave me the store to run as my project.” 

Hucker added: “We ended up saving the store. We turned the sales numbers around by over 100 per cent. We changed the operating hours, the merchandising assortment, and the staff. It was a tremendous first-hand experience.” 

Hucker’s second placement was at the Institute of Grocery Distribution, where he applied the strategic thinking aspects of his studies to analyse the pan-European food industry and UK food retailers. 

He said: “It was fantastic. I went from rolling up my sleeves on the shop floor during my first placement to teaching finance and marketing to management and reporting to the City of London.” 

Hucker continued: “Manchester Met gave me the rudimentary skills of retailing. It was a practical application of the theory, whether in finance, personnel, buying, merchandising or marketing. But the genesis, the absolute kernel, that I learned while at Manchester Met is driving accountability through teamwork. Don’t confuse effort with results.” 

Those formative years spent on the former Aytoun campus in Manchester city centre – and in the industry – proved vital. 

A fruitful career

After training in Germany and the US, Hucker joined the graduate scheme of German supermarket Aldi as one of the team’s founding members that set up Aldi UK. 

In the early 1990s, Aldi was a newcomer on British shores. He remembers other supermarket chains lobbying manufacturers not to supply Aldi due to its small size in the UK. 

“We would say: ‘Listen, you need to stop thinking of us as one store in the United Kingdom. You need to start thinking of us as 4,000 stores around the world.’ And suddenly, they were interested.”  

By the time Hucker left Aldi, he had been part of the firm’s expansion to 240 sites, including Wales and Scotland, and four large regional distribution centres. 

Around the turn of the millennium, he wanted to experience working life outside of the UK and moved to California for a job in technology. 

Speaking about his decision to move Stateside and switch industries, Hucker said: “Many people tell you to switch only one thing. Well, I don’t prescribe to conventional wisdom. I changed my job, function, title, industry, country and continent.” 

However, he missed retail and moved back into the sector four years later. He held a succession of senior executive positions with various American supermarket chains, including Walmart, before joining Florida-based Southeastern Grocers.  

When Hucker became President and CEO, he inherited a company headed towards bankruptcy. Six years later, his successful stewardship has become a Harvard Business School case study titled ‘A Cultural Transformation at Southeastern Grocers.’