The Story Behind Rodney McMullen: The Man Who Engineered Kroger's Success
CINCINNATI, OH - Customers who visited the Kroger in Lexington, Kentucky in 1978 might not have known it at the time, but the young stock boy passing by them in the aisles was Rodney McMullen, now CEO of Kroger. Over the next four decades he would lead Kroger to become a giant in the grocery world.McMullen put himself through college by working at Kroger.
"My parents figured if there's a will, there's a way," McMullen told reporters at Cincinnati.com. "I worked every job in that store, from the dairy to the deli."
He graduated 4 years later with a Masters in Accounting and a job offer from Kroger to work as an Accounting Supervisor in Kroger's Charlotte, NC division office. He quickly impressed corporate executives while in Charlotte. In 1986 he was promoted to Financial Analyst and moved to Cincinnati. While there he played a key role in Kroger's 1988 restructuring program under CEO Lyle Everingham and President Joe Pichler.
"He was so good at doing the calculations in record time," Pichler recalled. "He ran with the best on Wall Street."
By 1995 he was Kroger's CFO, a position from which he oversaw the 1999 Fred Meyer $13 billion acquisition.
Cincinnati.com notes that he was a similarly big part of implementing the sales strategy that allowed Kroger to compete with Wal-Mart's basement bottom prices.
"Sales had begun to flatten and our divisions said our prices were out of whack with Wal-Mart," Pichler recalled.
To combat this problem, Kroger calculated that by cutting prices they would be able to generate enough new sales to outweigh the loss of revenue per item. They would then be able to use this new revenue to further cut prices, allowing Kroger to compete on a more even playing field with the Wal-Mart super stores. Under Pichler and McMullen's leadership, Kroger saw sales surge in the wake of the price cuts, jumping from $50.1 billion in 2002 to $98.4 billion in 2013.
Additional innovations under McMullen and new CEO David Dillon such as the “Customer 1st” strategy, which capitalized on Kroger's 2003 investment in its groundbreaking loyalty reward card program, further solidified Kroger's place in the retail market.
By the time Rodney McMullen became Kroger's CEO, he had enjoyed 36 years of tremendous success with the company and mentorships with some of the biggest minds in Kroger's history in Everingham, Pichler and Dillon.
"The last 25 years, I've worked with legends,” said McMullen.
According to Cincinnati.com, today Kroger operates 2,640 supermarkets in 34 states and the District of Colombia, employs 375,000 workers, and has a surging stock backed by backed by 10.5 years of consistent sales growth and a very successful takeover of Harris Teeter.
