Summer Fresh extends family business

Summer Trottier was a freshman at Greenwood High School in 1998 when her parents, Dave and Lesley Trottier, decided to name their new grocery store chain after her.

At first she was shocked. Then she thought they were joking. But in the end, she was flattered.

“It’s a pretty cool thing to have a chain of stores named after you,” Summer said. “Not a lot of people have something like that.”

Summer Fresh Supermarket Inc. opened its first store in 1999 in Lamar, Dave Trottier said. Within the next two months, the company opened a store in Mount Vernon and another in Kimberling City. The company has grown to seven stores and has more than 500 employees, said Director of Store Operations Brent Brown, who is Lesley Trottier’s son and Dave Trottier’s stepson.

Prior to founding Summer Fresh, Dave Trottier owned Smitty’s Supermarket Inc. in Springfield, which he sold to Albertson’s in 1998. A noncompete clause kept the Trottiers out of Springfield, but the sale of Albertson’s in 2001 to Ramey/Price Cutter nullified the noncompete.

The Trottier family brought its business back to Springfield, this time as Summer Fresh, located at Plainview and Campbell, in November 2002.

In 2004, Summer Fresh sales were close to $60 million, and 2005 sales have surpassed that, though Trottier declined to say by how much.

A family of co-workers

Summer Fresh employees comprise both members of the Trottier family and the company family of employees, such as Jeff Wheeler, store manager in Springfield.

Wheeler, along with about 15 to 20 other employees have worked for the Trottier family for more than 20 years, first under the Smitty’s name and now Summer Fresh.

“We’ve all been a family for so long,” said Wheeler, who got his start 25 years ago at age 16 sorting pop bottles at Smitty’s.

“A lot of times some of the people who are above me, who are our bosses, you don’t think of them that way. You just think of them being your brother or sister. That’s just how it’s been throughout the years.”

The grocery chain’s rapid growth of seven stores in six years has been driven by a core group of longtime employees, Brown said. The loyalty of that core group, he added, is a testimony to how his parents runs the business.

The fact that Summer Fresh is locally owned, Trottier said, sets it apart from the crowd of big corporate grocery chains.

Future growth

Trottier said Summer Fresh has performed as he intended it to, with sales each year surpassing those of the previous year, but both he and Brown hope to grow the company to 10 to 15 stores in the next three to five years with the bulk of the growth in the Springfield market.

“Even though it may seem like a lofty goal, it’s obviously possible with the success and the rapid growth of the first seven stores,” Brown said.

But Brown doesn’t see the company moving away from its west/southwest Missouri roots.

“We’ve always kept our operation … in and around southwest Missouri. I think we’ll continue to do that with Summer Fresh,” Brown said.

The future growth of Summer Fresh most likely will involve the addition of another family member to the company. After Summer Trottier graduates from Missouri State University in May with a degree in hospitality and restaurant administration, she wants to get involved in the family company.

“I’d like to work in advertising somehow, but definitely not doing commercials anymore,” she said, in reference to her childhood appearances in Smitty’s television commercials.

She said her lack of experience in the grocery business does not intimidate her. Rather, she recognizes the abundance of resources around her that she has to learn from, including her parents and brother.

“I’ve got a lot of people to learn from who are experts. I figure that even though maybe I haven’t had formal training in the stores up to this point, I’ve got a wealth of knowledge around me to learn the ropes from,” Summer said.

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