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Donny Rouse, the CEO of the company, tried one and fell in love with them. The pralines were made available first in a single store and were a success. Today they are available in five stores. As Keyala’s Pralines grows and has the capacity to make more, there are more than 50 other Rouses waiting to carry the product. Bringing Other Communities Into Our Own Finding those local products is important, but so too is bringing the big brands from elsewhere into the local community. Rouses strives to get the hot new items before anyone else. “We do not like having someone send us a picture of an item that just came out that we don’t have, that we’ve never heard about,” says Chris Acosta, the category manager of Rouses and another third- generation team member, “and we stress that to every player in the game: They need to be presenting those new items to us first. And as we grow, as we get bigger, that means more opportunities for our customers to get those things first, because we have better buying power and can negotiate those kinds of things.” Being first, innovating hard — that’s one way that Rouses succeeds, and how it helps the local products it carries succeed. “We were the first grocery store in Thibodaux to put a bakery in,” says Donald Rouse. “We were the first to put a florist in. We were the first ones to boil crawfish in the store. The first deli. The first scanners. The list goes on. It was a learning proposi- tion for us.” Sometimes the innovation borders on science fiction. “I remember when we were stamping the price on every canned good and I remember reading about — this was a long time ago — a magazine that they were working on presenting a barcode that would be placed on every item, and that’s how the item would be identified, and eventually there would be scanners that would ring it up. And I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that would be amazing!’” There’s a sense of adventure that comes with being first to innovate. “And nobody can take it away,” says Donald. “They can copy you, but they can’t beat you.” Building the Community One Business at a Time We live in a world where manufacturing feels as though it is performed by robots. Glance down the aisle and marvel at what feels like perfection: every item stocked and stacked, flush rows of products like perfect lines converging in the distance. Every label is so straight, every bottle and box so nicely designed and printed, and within, just the right amount of food, prepared just the right way. You’ve never opened a bag of chips and found a whole potato in there. You’ve never opened a can of soda and had

Rouses Means Local Innovation by David W. Brown

In 2007, Rouses had its biggest expansion in the company’s history when it acquired the Southern division of A&P’s Sav-A- Center stores. In one month, the company, which then had 15 stores, added 17 more to its family.

“There wasn’t much sleep in October 2007!” says Ali Rouse Royster with a laugh.

She adds: “Those were long days. We were converting four stores a week, two on Wednesdays and two on Fridays. The first one was our Carrollton store — we did it by itself as a test: Can we do this? We had to replace register systems — overall we tried to keep — because we were doing so much — we tried to keep everything intact, but the first thing we were trying to do was bring in local products that we carry. We knew our guests would realize that they were going from this national conglomerate to these folks from the bayou who they don’t really know.” Rouses managers figured the best thing they could do was what they already did best. “We reached out to our local vendors and said, ‘We need to get your products into these stores as fast as we can.’” And local also means local variety . They were cognizant that large retailers might advertise carrying local, and yet carry only one kind of Blue Runner beans, for example. “Local for us means we’ve got every flavor in every size,” says Ali. “Overnight, we added 400 new local products to their shelves.” The Rouses network of stores lets local products grow to become statewide and even regional products. It takes time, though. Small companies just starting out might only be able to make enough product for a small group of stores. Once such story of a growing company is Keyala’s Pralines, a New Orleans-style, authentic, handmade praline. That product is so local that it started in a Rouses Market, literally. Keyala worked at the Downtown New Orleans market and came up with an extraordinary praline.

48 MARCH•APRIL 2020