Peter Lynch lifted a small tub of sale-priced hummus from a remote corner of the deli case.
"This is selling like crazy," the chief executive officer of Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. gently prodded the store's deli manager. "Wouldn't we sell more of it if you moved it over there?"
CEO-led inspections like this one last week at a freshly remodeled St. Petersburg store have long been a routine ritual in chain retailing. But not at Winn-Dixie.
Leading the struggling chain out of bankruptcy four years ago, Lynch became the first Winn-Dixie chief executive to set foot inside any of the Tampa Bay stores since the early 1990s. And in the toughest fix-it job he has taken on in a 36-year supermarket career, the burly and charismatic Lynch has swapped tips with workers in every one of his chain's 522 stores from New Orleans to Key West.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, FL).