Page 8 - Volume 13 Number 8
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 aircraft as business tools or a time when the company won’t use a Beechcraft King Air, which they’ve operated for eight years.
The timeframe during which they’ve owned a helicopter or fixed­wing aircraft has also been the era of the largest growth period in the family’s nearly six decades in the grocery business. What started in 1960 with one small store in Houma, Louisiana, now is one of the largest independent grocers in the United States with 63 supermarkets across southern Louisiana, along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and in lower Alabama.
Deep family roots in food supply, community
Rouses Markets is considered one of the Top 50 grocers in the United States by supermarket industry experts and is one of the fastest growing family­owned companies in the country. The company earned 2018 Southeast Retailer of the Year accolades from The Shelby Report, a leading food and retail publication that gives out its highest honor based on industry and community contribution and leadership in the industry.
Donny said Rouses Markets is built on a foundation of service to community that started four genera­ tions ago and has been nurtured by family and team members since.
Anthony J. Rouse, Sr. (pictured here), and his cousin, Ciro Di Marco, opened the family’s first market in 1960 in Houma, Louisiana. Today, Rouses Markets is considered one of the Top 50 grocers in the United States by super- market industry experts.
Joseph P. Rouse, known as J.P., immigrated to   groceries for customers after school and on weekends.
 Louisiana from Sardinia in 1900. He worked at a family truck farm raising garden vegetables. In 1923, he moved to Thibodaux to start his own farm, growing shallots and potatoes. He started City Produce Company that same year, which helped local, independent farmers get their fruits and vegetables to the rest of the state and, eventually, stores as far away as Alaska. J.P.’s son Anthony J. Rouse, Sr., and his cousin, Ciro Di Marco, worked side by side in the City Produce Company’s packing shed washing and sorting green onions, which were then packed in trucks and rail cars filled with ice. When J.P. died in 1954, the cousins continued to run the farm and the produce distribution company.
But the big farms that drew J.P. to Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes were already starting to shut down. Trading on the tradition of quality at City Produce Company, Anthony and Ciro changed course in 1960 and invested all they had to open the family’s first grocery store. Called Ciro’s, it was a simple 7,000­square­foot store in the nearby town of Houma.
They focused on finding the best quality and then getting the best prices so they could sell groceries cheaper. There were not large wholesale suppliers like the industry has today, so their efforts were pioneering: making their own Cajun specialties, drying their own spices, cutting meat to order, asking neighboring farmers to deliver produce directly to the store, for example.
As they got old enough, Anthony’s children joined in the business, stocking shelves, bagging and carrying
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Often, they were sent to the local dairy to get milk to sell in the store.
By 1975, it was time to open a larger store and Ciro, who had no children, was ready to retire. Anthony’s son Donald bought his uncle’s share in the business, and the family opened Rouses #1, a supermarket in their hometown of Thibodaux. While a typical supermarket at the time was 20,000 square feet, this one felt massive at 28,000 square feet and offering the area’s first floral shop, bakery and deli.
It was a true family business. The cooks used produce, meat and seafood off the store’s shelves to make the deli specials, which were based on what Anthony’s wife Joyce was making for dinner. Eventually all of the couples’ six children would work in the business, with sons Donald and Tommy becoming managing partners.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the family added new stores in surrounding south Louisiana communities either through purchasing existing stores or building new. The third generation started tagging along at the stores and working during the summers and after school.
“We lived across the street from our offices so basically every day after school I was in the office sitting with my dad and grandpa, so I grew up listening to them talk and learning the business,” said Donny, who has worked in nearly every department for Rouses Markets from bagging to produce to his current CEO role. 
  AUGUST 2019

















































































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