Hello. My name is Dave. How can I help you?
That simple phrase is one of the first things I learned in the grocery industry, nearly 50 years ago. Before I understood anything about margins or merchandising or supply chains, I learned that everything starts with that question. A mentor of mine, Gary Morris, used to call me “Hoss,” and I spent a long time wondering if he just didn’t know my name, before I realized he only called people “Hoss” if he liked them. Gary pulled me aside one day and said, “Hoss, if we take care of our customers, they’ll take care of us. And you know what else, Hoss? If we take care of our teammates, they’ll take care of us, too”
I’ve thought about that for all these years. And you know what? Gary was right.
That principle — give first, serve first — is something I learned even before entering the grocery business, back in Sunday school from a teacher named Mrs. Davis. She taught us a universal truth: we best serve God by serving others. That means using our unique gifts for good. Doing good deeds big and small. Serving our neighbors, friends, and family with open hearts. And if we do that, we build better and stronger communities together.
Some people call this the boomerang effect. The positive energy, kindness, and help we send out into the world has a way of coming back, sometimes in ways we never expected. It creates value through the power of cooperation and collective strength.
The Hill in Front of Us
The 2026 grocery landscape is intense. Our consumers are struggling under the weight of a K-shaped economy that lifts some and leaves others behind. Egg deflation is compressing margins in one of our highest-traffic categories. Pharmacy WAC suppression continues to erode a critical revenue stream. A lack of snowfall has hurt our mountain resort communities and the stores that serve them. New competition is arriving, and the ripple effects of recent world events reaching our shelves.
These are real challenges. They show up in our P&Ls, in our staffing decisions, and in the faces of the customers who walk through our doors every morning hoping their dollars stretch a little further.
These challenges remind me of an old story from Greek mythology — the story of Sisyphus. If you’re not familiar with it, Sisyphus was a king in ancient Greece who angered the gods. As punishment, Zeus condemned him to spend eternity rolling an enormous boulder up a steep hill. Every single day, he’d push that boulder all the way to the top and every single night, it would roll right back down to the bottom. And the next morning, he’d have to start all over again. Forever. Sound familiar?
I’ve been thinking about this story for years, and I’m convinced Sisyphus wasn’t just a Greek king. Sisyphus was a Greek independent grocer.
Think about it. Every morning we open those doors and start pushing. Stocking shelves, managing costs, fighting for every customer, every basket, every penny of margin. And by the end of the day? The work starts all over again.
But here’s where our stories diverge: Sisyphus was alone.
We are not.
The Power of One Associated
Think about Chris Gentry, a single-store owner running Madison Foods in beautiful Ennis, Montana. Ennis is situated about 70 miles northwest of Yellowstone National Park. Chris opens the doors to her store every day and prepares to push the heavy rock of grocery for the Ennis community. But Chris is not alone. Chris has a great store team who helps her serve her customers and community in an extraordinary way. She has hundreds of AFS experts behind her in distribution and daily operations. She has dozens of fellow member retailers she can call for real-world solutions. And she has hundreds of committed vendor partners and service providers backing her up every single day.
Chris is one store — but she is not one person pushing a boulder alone. She is backed by the power of a virtual chain and a strong community of teammates and friends. That is the cooperative model. That is One Associated.
And that model is exactly what this moment demands.
Our boulders become lighter when we push together. We might even break the curse and finally get that boulder over the hill.
Three Elevations for the Year Ahead
I want to challenge all of us — AFS team members and retail partners alike — to elevate in three areas this year:
- Elevate Our Aggregation.This co-op was founded in 1940 on a simple idea: buying power. That foundation still matters,but it’s no longer enough on its own. We need to build performance power through disciplined, joint in-store execution. When we execute promotions together, we generate aggregated data and proof of performance, that lets us go back to our vendor partners and negotiate stronger investment in our system. Better aggregation and performing together means better results. It’s that direct.
- Elevate Our Collaboration.Many of you are already deeply involved through advisory councils, share groups, steering committees, joint business planning, and one-on-one partnerships. Thank you. But we can do more. Ifyou’re not yet plugged in, reach out. We’ll help you find the right way to contribute. We want and need your help. The best ideas in this system don’t come from a corporate office. They come from the people closest to the customer.
- Elevate Our Faith — In Each Other, and In Ourselves.This may be the most important one.In hard years, doubt creeps in. It’s easy to look at the challenges and feel small. But you should know this: you are the best grocers in the Mountain West. You serve your communities with open hearts, every single day. The power of this cooperative is not just in its logistics or its buying scale, it’s in the shared commitment of the people who make it run. Let’s believe in that. Let’s trust each other enough to push harder together.
Be Elevators
At Associated Food Stores, we must be elevators — not just for our own stores or our own departments, but for the entire system. When one of us rises, we all rise. When one of us struggles, we jump in to help. That’s what a cooperative is. That’s what a team does.
The hill is real. The boulder is heavy. But we’ve pushed this boulder before. In 1940, the grocery industry was a rough place for independent retailers. Large chains were dominating the market, forcing small grocers out of business or coercing them into buying goods at inflated prices.
Those 34 grocers were Sisyphus, too. And we’re here because of them!
We’ve been at this a long time, and we have something that no amount of market disruption can take away: each other.
Let’s face this year the way we’ve faced every hard year before — together, with open hearts and steady hands.
Hello. We are Associated Food Stores. How can we help you?