Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | DECEMBER 15, 2025 11 ON THE RECORD | Q& A π 25_010717_Hartford_Business_Journal_DEC Mod: September 17, 2025 10:18 AM Print: 10/23/25 page 1 v2.5 DRY ZONE WET ZONE NOW YOU CAN FIND IT! SHADOW BOARDS KEEP YOU ORGANIZED ORDER BY 6 PM FOR SAME DAY SHIPPING 1-800-295-5510 uline.com The importer doesn't win because their sales go down. And Stew Leonard's doesn't win because our sales go down. You really want to avoid price increases at any cost. We're eating a little bit of the tariff cost right now. It's not a huge amount, but we're having a good year so far. We haven't really raised prices due to the tariffs. Q: Would you consider grocery prices to be high? A: It always depends on what you compare it to. If you look back, even with the inflation right now around 3%, it was higher in the past under the last administration. I'll put it this way: I'm seeing some effort to lower prices in the grocery industry. Trump just took the 15% tariff off all of our tropical fruit from Costa Rica. That's going to lower the price of the mangoes, the pineapples and the bananas. He just rescinded the tariff on Colombia, which had to do with our coffee, so that's going to be able to relieve some of the coffee price. Egg prices are down substantially. That had maybe a little bit to do with inflation, but it was mainly that avian flu that caused a supply-and-demand issue. Q: Where are prices the highest? A: Prices are high on a couple things like meat. It's the highest I've ever seen it in my whole life. I talked to our ranchers out in Kansas, and they just say, 'look, we've had some droughts, so there's not as much grass out in the fields. It's more expensive for me to buy and raise a head of cattle right now because we have to buy more feed.' The ranchers are at a point where they're just saying it's not really a good investment for them to buy a baby calf and then spend two years feeding it and caring for it. Q: How have high grocery prices impacted your bottom line? A: The food business works on razor-thin margins, so you've got to keep your eye on the ball every single day. If we think the price is going down in the future, we'll wait and we won't raise any prices. We'll just keep things the same and eat a little bit of the price increase right now, so that has put pressure on our bottom line. Then you look at our labor rate. Our average labor rate is $23 an hour, and we're just getting ready to raise that up again. Energy costs are up like 30% for our kilowatt hours. There are other things aside from the food business that affect our margins, which are labor and expenses. You've got to keep an eye on all this. Q: Are you actively scouting new loca- tions, and what criteria do you look for when choosing a site? A: We're looking all over. We have stores in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. They've all been very successful in those markets. A lot of it comes to where is real estate available? You need a store that's about 80,000 square feet. It has to be available right now. There might be some good sites, but they're just not available right now. We have our feelers out in the real estate market. If something comes up that we feel would be in a successful community, we'll go ahead and decide to open a new store there. Q: How long do you hope Stew Leon- ard's stays under family ownership? A: We probably get an offer a month from someone willing to buy Stew Leonard's. Some group looks at us and says, 'oh, wow, we'd love to buy that company,' but our family is not excited about selling. Our family's philosophy is we're going to take grandma's wedding ring and we're going to shine it up and hand it off to the next generation. We're not going to sell grandma's wedding ring. This business is a love and a passion, and it's been a wonderful experience to participate in the growth and in the changes in the industry and the people that I've met. It's just been phenomenal. We don't want to sell it. SUCCESSION PLANNING WEIGHS ON SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS A U.S. Bank survey of 1,000 small businesses shows many owners feel over- whelmed by succession planning, and nearly half still don't have a formal plan. SUCCESSION-PLANNING FINDING % OF SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS Have a formal succession plan 54% Say succession planning feels overwhelming 62% Have discussed a transition with their successor 63% Have not discussed expectations/timeline with a successor 37% Planning to transition their business in the next 5 years 55% Expect transition to be harder than anticipated 42% Stew Leonard's stores in Danbury (left) and Newington. Photos | CoStar

• Cover