Roche Bros. part I

In 1952, two brothers, Pat and Bud Roche, opened a meat and produce market in Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood. Their business plan was simple: sell the highest-quality meat and produce while providing the highest-quality customer service.

Forty-six years later, Pat and Bud turned their company over to their children. In the intervening years, they had built their one meat shop into over a dozen full-size, upscale supermarkets in some of Boston’s toniest suburbs. Today, there are eighteen Roche Bros. and Sudbury Farms grocery stores, all still family-owned. The firm’s sales exceed a half-billion dollars a year.

The company has stuck to its original mission all this time. Roche Bros. is renowned throughout Boston’s Metro West and South Shore for the high quality of its meats and produce. It is legendary for its customer service.

Roche Bros. is an icon. Its customers actually brag about how well their store treats them. This may sound trite, but it is absolutely the case: you can’t buy such fiercely-loyal customers, not at any price.

Jane worked for this company as a manager for 16 years. I rely heavily on the lessons she taught me about the Roche brand of customer service for my two books (the second co-written by her). Our close friend Joe Curtin, Director of Recruitment, Training and Development, has taught me more invaluable lessons about spoiling one's customers rotten. Roche war stories pepper my customer service presentations to business owners and top executives nation-wide.

Roche Bros. was one of Coiné Language School’s first and biggest clients for workforce training; when Five-Star Customer Service hit bookstores, Roche’s invited me to give eight presentations to a hand-picked cadre of rising management stars. The student had become the master, I am proud to say.

Indeed, my second book, Spoil 'Em Rotten! is a parable that takes place in a grocery store. While that store is modeled more closely after Wegmans supermarkets, the two companies share an awful lot in common, including friendship between the families.

I will not tell you that Roche Bros. is a perfect company, a testament of all that is right with American Business today. It is not, and I would not insult you with the suggestion. I don’t think such a company exists in any event.

What I will tell you is, it amazes me whenever I find a company that can take $8/hour workers, including high school kids and recent immigrants, and teach them to give $500/hour service. Roche Bros. is one such company. If you want their reputation or a part of their success, your company should emulate their customer service practices and the spirit that underlies them.

How does Roche Bros – or any company – do it?

Culture. That touchy-feely, impossible-to-measure bane of self-described hard-nosed business “leaders.”

How do you create and maintain a culture of service? If Roche Bros. can do it with their legions of front-line workers, so can you. Either you’re hiring from the same shallow end of the talent pool as they are, or else you’re starting in an even better position than Roche Bros. is.

…Let me repeat that: if they can do it at their supermarket, why can’t you?

You can.

I’ll see you back here soon for the ten “Golden Principles” that lie at the heart of Roche Bros. unrivalled reputation for service excellence. Pay special attention to number 8.