Building to scale

Bruce Peterson built it and they came. While Wal-Mart may be trying to find its way past flat same-store sales, retail consultant Dick Spezzano told me today that Bruce Peterson's plan for Wal-Mart's growth in produce retailing over the past 15 years worked amazingly well.
"Bruce is one of the visionaries," Spezzano said. "He took them from six supercenters to 2,300," he said. And one distribution center to 38 DCS. Peterson's plan to dial up produce volume meant getting commitments from increasing number of suppliers.
Even with the buzz of growth, Spezzano pointed out that Peterson was very accessible to many commodity associations and industry groups through the years. He said his efforts to expand use of RPCs and RFID were broad-based and inclusive.
"Wal-Mart was Bruce Peterson," he said.

After Peterson's resignation from Wal-Mart today, Spezzano said that Peterson will be attractive to any one of a number of high profile produce companies.