Eyes & Ears: Price Cutter ups ante for Cattle Baron's Ball

Imagine receiving 100 donation requests each month at your place of business. It would take a full-time job to appropriately respond to them.

That's the situation Price Cutter grocery stores finds itself in, having built its name as a philanthropic corporation - most notably through the Price Cutter Charity Championship.

Those efforts continue this year with the grocer jumping on as title sponsor of the American Cancer Society Cattle Baron's Ball. As a member of the ball's publicity committee, I sat down with Price Cutter Executive Vice President Larry Hayward and Director of Guest Services Kim Goble.

Eric Olson: Why ACS, and why this event?

Hayward: It goes back as far as the mid-1970s. The original owner of our company (Bill Cohen) died from cancer. In fact, our past president and CEO, Richard Taylor, received a national lifetime achievement award from the ACS in the 1990s.

EO: How did the Cattle Baron's Ball opportunity present itself?

Goble: This event has been held around the U.S. They were looking for somebody who would be a natural tie-in as a sponsorship, especially with the cattle theme. As a local grocer, I think it was a natural fit that they came to Price Cutter.

LH: And I think they realized we're in our 11th year with the Price Cutter Charity Championship, which has given more than $5 million back to local charities.

EO: The title sponsorship is at a $50,000 level. Is that a strictly monetary contribution?

LH: All total, in-kind donations and cash donations, it will be $100,000. We are providing all the beef, basically, all the food and beverages.

EO: Are there any other in-kind donations?

LH: We are having (chef) Jeffrey Starr coming (from Trinchero Family Estates in Napa Valley, Calif.), and he's going to cook. We did, through one of our vendors, arrange to get (headline entertainment Marshal Reign) ... We've got our hands in the middle of about every detail, down to the auction items (pointing to stacked boxes along the wall of his office). We've been collecting items for the silent auctions to help them raise money (such as) a year supply of beef and a freezer to put it in.

EO: Are you going to participating in any of the activities? Are you going to bid on any items, ride the bull, play some Texas Hold 'em sponsored by Downstream Casino?

LH: I'm not much of a poker player. I may take my swing at the mechanical bull.

EO: You don't want to bid on a Clydesdale, donated by Jeff Gower?

LH: I'd love to have it, wouldn't know what to do with it. Guess I could put it out in the lawn out front (laughs). There's a lot of neat stuff. We got a Jack Daniels bar in this morning. They built a bar out of two Jack Daniels barrels with a bar top across it. It's got a lazy Susan in it and a wine rack on the backside. It was done by (Owen Trogdon of Bunk House Art & Design in Fair Grove), and Jack Daniels sent the barrels in and paid him to build the bar.

EO: You mentioned the charity championship. Are there other less-known or understated causes that Price Cutter gives to?

KG: I answer the customer service hotline, and I can tell you that we get hundreds of requests a month from schools, churches, organizations, Rotary clubs - you name it. We get requests for either a food item or some kind of support. We have an individual that does nothing but take care of the requests that come through that. I love it. It's handled very smoothly. ... We were one of the major sponsors for ("Extreme Makeover: Home Edition") providing more than 600 volunteers with food every day.

EO: What is the budget for charitable donations?

LH: We look at them more on an individual basis. The Price Cutter Charity Championship is a given that we're going to do that. The Cattle Baron's Ball was not in the budget. It was something we wanted to do, we felt like we needed to do, so we did it.

EO: Have you signed on to sponsor next year's ball?

LH: We haven't. We've got to get through this one.

[[In-content Ad]]Eric Olson is editor of Springfield Business Journal.