Month: April 2023

BOISE, Idaho, April 7, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Albertsons Companies, Inc. (NYSE: ACI) announced today that it has partnered with global financial services technology leader FIS, which represents supplemental health benefits administrators including Fresh Connect, PayForward and WEX™that utilize its technology payment platform. Additionally, Albertsons Cos. is entering into a partnership to accept benefit cards from Soda Health, which works to improve health equity by tailoring benefits based on individual needs. Customers with FIS and Soda Health-integrated benefit cards will now be able to make purchases on eligible food and health items at Albertsons Cos. banner stores including Safeway, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Shaw’s, Tom Thumb and ACME.

Health benefit cards are pre-paid debit cards that are funded by Medicare Advantage plans, employers, healthcare providers or local governments and can be used to make purchases on eligible over-the-counter medicine and wellness care products, as well as nutritious foods, whole grains, fish and poultry. Customers eligible for SNAP and WIC benefits can also use their health benefit cards in conjunction with their EBT account.

Albertsons Cos. continues to partner with benefit card providers Solutran (S3), InComm (OTC Network) and Speak (formerly Speak Retail Group). Most national health plans such as Aetna, Humana, United Healthcare and Centene and many regional plans including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cigna offer these benefits. Customers are encouraged to check with their payment provider for a complete list of eligible items.

“Expanding our benefit card partnerships are essential in ensuring that our customers have access to the broadest selection of nutritious food, supplements and OTC medicine that improve their health and well-being,” said Omer Gajial, EVP of Pharmacy and Health at Albertsons Cos. “We are striving to be more than just a neighborhood grocery store; we want to build a deeper connection with our customers, support them in their wellness journey and address hunger in our most vulnerable communities.”

As part of a company-wide commitment to fight hunger and inspire healthy eating, the Albertsons Companies Foundation pledged to reduce food insecurity through its Nourishing Neighbors program by increasing the availability of fresh produce and nutritious foods in local area food banks, soup kitchens and community organizations. Additionally, Albertsons Cos. and its Foundation will help 50,000 eligible neighbors enroll in SNAP and WIC benefits in 2023.

To learn more about the supplemental health benefits program, including an overview of what products are covered, please visit albertsons.com/benefit-card.

About Albertsons Companies

Albertsons Companies is a leading food and drug retailer in the United States. As of December 3, 2022, the Company operated 2,270 retail food and drug stores with 1,720 pharmacies, 402 associated fuel centers, 22 dedicated distribution centers and 19 manufacturing facilities. The Company operates stores across 34 states and the District of Columbia with 24 banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets and Balducci’s Food Lovers Market. The Company is committed to helping people across the country live better lives by making a meaningful difference, neighborhood by neighborhood. In 2021, along with the Albertsons Companies Foundation, the Company contributed nearly $200 million in food and financial support, including approximately $40 million through our Nourishing Neighbors Program to ensure those living in our communities have enough to eat.

Read the original press release and learn more about our Recipe for Change on our website.

We all know that representation matters, and this is especially important in business. In a new series for 2023, Pizza Hut LLC and its restaurants will be showcasing a franchisee for each heritage month (Black History Month, Women’s History Month, etc.) to have a chance to get to know them more personally; learn more about their culture, background and traditions; and celebrate the diversity represented within Pizza Hut LLC’s franchise group.

We recently sat down with Pizza Hut franchisee Jason Cochran, Chief Executive Officer of American West Restaurant Group (AWRG), to learn more about his background and career journey, hear some of the challenges he’s faced in business and discover what advice he’d give aspiring business owners.

Share with us a little about your background, your career journey and how you landed where you are.
“I received my MBA from Southern Methodist University (SMU Cox School of Business) in Dallas, Texas. Since then, I’ve accumulated more than 25 years of experience in various positions across restaurant fast casual, specialty retail, sporting goods, consumer electronics and fashion apparel. I spent 14 years at GameStop and four years at Chipotle, with my last role being Vice President of Operations. Now, at AWRG, I have the amazing job of leading the third-largest franchise group with Pizza Hut restaurants and bringing my passion for leading operational excellence across the organization.”

As a mixed-race business owner, have you experienced any career challenges and, if so, how did you overcome them?
“I have experienced many career challenges requiring perseverance, mainly with identifying role models and associations. Throughout my career, it was often difficult to find bi-racial mentors who I could connect with, especially on similar leadership characteristics. It’s important – both personally and professionally in business – to experience having role models. However, having a growth mindset and discovering what it means to be authentic with my natural style, has opened many doors to be the best version of myself.”

What made you choose to be a Pizza Hut franchise owner?
“I was attracted to Pizza Hut, primarily because of the many fond memories I have with my mom, dad and brother visiting our neighborhood “red roof” on Bethany Home Road in Glendale, Arizona. I have always had a connection with Pizza Hut and relate it to family and fun food. Having an opportunity to lead the third-largest Pizza Hut franchisee is a fulfilling way to enable a legacy of memories for thousands of store team members and millions of customers.”

How do you support diverse communities in and outside of your business? What can other business leaders do to provide more support and create a more inclusive community?
“I believe that supporting diversity, equity and inclusion is in three buckets for me. First, it starts with my responsibility as a husband and father of a multi-racial family. While the demands of my career consume a lot of my time, when I’m spending time with my family, I focus on being in the moment and opening conversations about how they see the world and scenarios of how others might innocently perceive them.

The second bucket is as a Pizza Hut franchisee. As a franchisee, I welcome the obligation of employing people within the community who represent local customers. I strive for an organizational environment that fosters an atmosphere that provokes employees to thrive and pursue their passion. Talking with team members about their professional goals, providing support to unlock barriers, and celebrating wins is essential to creating positive outcomes. Tying these outcomes to more sales, more profit, and less cost, along with developing people, create a culture of having fun and being accountable for growth.

The third bucket is as the CEO of AWRG. As a franchisee operator in business communities, it is important that our company supports investing and giving back, related to our cultural values that have the best interest for sustaining our Pizza Hut reputation. Being involved with schools – sponsoring sports events, supporting fundraisers, providing school lunches, and promoting the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! program – builds academic capabilities, which influence the future of communities we serve. It is important that AWRG does its part with Pizza Hut to cultivate systems in order to grow diversity in communities.”

In celebration of Black History Month, are there any special cultural traditions or activities that you participate in?
“As a family, we tend to watch biographies, documentaries, movies and read books that represent real history, progress for civil rights and our changing the world. While my sons, 13 and 10, marvel over the superhero movie series Black Panther and Creed, this year, we watched Emancipation and Till. We usually attend a festival, and my wife often attends or teaches Afro-Colombian salsa classes.”

Who, within the Black community, has been your biggest inspiration – both in life and business?
“I am inspired by the movement of Black community leaders in the mid-50s to late ‘60s and ‘70s in the U.S. This was the era of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohammed Ali, and Shirly Chisholm – people who made bold declarations that will forever change the world for Black communities. I am most inspired by what my mother and father persevered through as a bi-racial married couple in the 1960s, when interracial marriage was banned in 16 states. I am most emotionally moved by Mildred and Richard Loving – who fought against the laws of Virginia, confining them and everyone else from marrying interracially. June 12 is Loving Day – an important day in my eyes – and it’s the celebration in the U.S. marking the day the Supreme Court struck down state bans against interracial marriage.”

When you were an aspiring business owner, what is some advice that would have been helpful to you or that you wish you had?
“I was very fortunate to have a football coach during my teenage years who invested time, introducing me to writing positive affirmations, having goals, and maintaining a positive self-image. My advice for today’s business owners and young entrepreneurs would be to “dream BIG,” and “FAIL fast.” Meaning: Unleashing a mindset to envision what you really want out of life without limitations. FAIL is simply – First Attempt At Learning.”

If you could tell your child-self some advice, what would it be?
“Embrace who you are, regardless of differences to those around you, because it will enable the best version of yourself.”

For the 11th consecutive year, Arrow Electronics supported FIRST Robotics and its Colorado regional competition featuring 43 high school teams with over 1,100 student participants, and 430 volunteers and mentors.

This year’s competition was “Charged Up,” where students focused on transforming renewable energy to power a better future involving technology. Students built industrial-sized robots that were renewably powered and maneuvered them with both pre-programmed commands and direct controls.

Students traveled from all over Colorado and neighboring states – and even a team from the Netherlands – to compete March 24-25 at the University of Denver.

The competition is made up of alliances, where three teams collaborate and learn the meaning of “gracious professionalism,” a core tenet of the program. Teams also explore potential career paths as they work together to design, build, and program robots, just like they would in a real- life engineering job, as well as marketing, finance, and other business skills.

Winning teams included : 1339 Angelbotics from Denver’s East High School, 4499 The Highlanders from Fort Collins, and 1799 Wired Up! From Littleton, Colorado.

“FIRST develops well-rounded engineers not just through robots, but also through real-world experiences,” said Hailey Holman, member of the winning team 4499, The Highlanders.

“FIRST students run STEM camps, support victims of natural disasters, and learn how to run businesses. They expand outside their local community, going internationally to refugee camps, orphanages, and community spaces to share STEM. FIRST is a program that provides opportunities for anyone, regardless of their background, to excel in any discipline they may find their passion in,” Holman said.

In addition to the regional prizes, teams were judged for industrial design, entrepreneurship, and team imagery. The FIRST Dean’s List award is also distributed, which recognizes “the most outstanding students who have led their teams and communities to increased awareness for FIRST and its mission while achieving personal technical expertise and accomplishment.” Holman from team 4499 won the Dean’s Finalist Award in Colorado and is eligible to win again at the World Championship in Houston, Texas in late April.

About FIRST and Colorado FIRST Robotics
Colorado FIRST (www.coloradofirst.org) is a Colorado 501(c)(3) founded in 2001 to represent and achieve the mission of FIRST (www.firstinspires.org). FIRST is a robotics community that prepares young people for the future through a suite of inclusive, team-based robotics programs for ages 4-18 (PreK-12) that can be facilitated in school or in structured afterschool programs. Boosted by a global support system of volunteers, educators, and sponsors that include over 200 of the Fortune 500 companies, teams operate under a signature set of FIRST Core Values to conduct research, fundraise, design, build, and showcase their achievements during annual challenges. An international not-for-profit organization founded by accomplished inventor Dean Kamen in 1989, FIRST has a proven impact on STEM learning, interest, and skill-building well beyond high school. Alumni of FIRST programs gain access to exclusive scholarships, internships, and other opportunities that create connections and open pathways to a wide variety of careers.

About Arrow Electronics 
Arrow Electronics guides innovation forward for over 210,000 leading technology manufacturers and service providers. With 2022 sales of $37 billion, Arrow develops technology solutions that improve business and daily life. Learn more at fiveyearsout.com.

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Gen Blog

As Gen™ kicks off our Earth Month celebrations, we are helping remind people of the need to safeguard global access to clean water. On this year’s World Water Day, held annually on March 22, we took up the call to action for the third year in a row.

Gen once again partnered with Planet Water Foundation to deliver clean drinking water to rural communities in India. For this year’s project, Gen volunteers worked alongside Planet Water Foundation representatives to construct a new AquaTower at the Arignar Anna Municipal School in Anumandputheri, Tamil Nadu, a village of 2,250 people.

“We are so glad Gen has returned as one of our World Water Day program partners for 2023,” said John Deotrakul, Director of Global Communications & Development for Planet Water Foundation. “We have already seen the enormous impacts that our work together in past years has had on communities in Keerapakkam and Vandavasi, and we are thrilled to expand those efforts with this new AquaTower in Anumandputheri. The safe drinking water and hand-washing access that these projects provide revolutionize the overall health and wellness of these communities.”

The Arignar Anna Municipal School, which serves 340 elementary and middle school students, sees absenteeism spike during the rainy season because of waterborne diseases. With no water filtration system in the village, students have no choice but to drink polluted water, and the resulting sicknesses cause them to miss school.

The AquaTower is a water filtration system capable of producing 1,000 liters (~265 gallons) of clean drinking water per hour and functions as a hand-washing station for students, caregivers, and family members. The clean water this system provides will help keep these children well enough to attend school and prevent illnesses in the school community and beyond.

This project also supports progress toward the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, focused on achieving water and sanitation for all by 2030. Gen supports SDG 6, as well as several other SDGs, described in more detail in our 2022 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report.

Planet Water Foundation has worked since 2009 to respond to the global water crisis, delivering safe drinking water through the AquaTower, water-health and hygiene behaviors through its education programs, and surface disinfection systems through its AquaSan equipment. The organization has reached more than three million people in 26 countries.

Gen’s partnership with Planet Water Foundation is one example of our commitment to environmental stewardship. You can read more about how we help protect the planet in our 2022 ESG Report.