Company Blog

The Cost of a Closed Mind

by Adam Zack — February 18, 2026

“…open-mindedness isn’t a label—it’s a practice.”

It all sounds so simple. You’re either open-minded or closed-minded. Open-minded people welcome change, invite new ideas, and don’t take criticism personally. They empower others, aren’t threatened by success around them, and tend to lead without ego. Closed-minded people, of course, live on the other side of that line. In theory, it feels like a choice—decide to be open-minded and move on.

In practice, it’s rarely that clean. Closed-mindedness doesn’t usually come from stubbornness; it comes from experience. From past encounters that convince us we already know the outcome before we’ve even evaluated what’s in front of us. After more than 30 years immersed in wine as both a job and a hobby, what began as knowledge quietly hardened into bias. I had decided—confidently—that certain regions simply didn’t produce good wine. Southern California and Baja, Mexico topped that list. I’d tasted enough to “know,” or so I told myself.

Then a friend visited with two bottles: a Russian River Pinot Noir and a red blend from Los Angeles. The Pinot was opened first and was, predictably, excellent. The Los Angeles wine sat untouched, mentally reserve...

by Adam Zack — February 11, 2026

“Personal sharpening includes reading and education.”

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

One of my favorite teaching stories is the one about the woodcutter who got a new job and really wanted to impress his boss.

Once upon a time, a very strong woodcutter asked for a job with a timber merchant and he got it. The pay was really good and so were the work conditions. He really liked his new boss and the company. For those reasons and as a matter of personal pride, the woodcutter was determined to do his best. His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work. The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees. “Congratulations,” the boss said. “Go on that way!” Very motivated by the boss’ words, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he could only bring 15 trees. The third day he tried even harder, but he could only bring 10 trees. Day after day he was bringing less and less trees. “I must be losing my strength”, the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on. “When was...

by Adam Zack — February 4, 2026

“Being good in all important roles in life is more important than being great in a few…”

For some reason I have been thinking a lot about goodness and greatness lately. And my thoughts have even made me think differently. There is a lot of greatness by individuals in the world. Super Bowl MVP. Olympic Gold Medalist. Top Chef. Academy Award Winner. There are great achievers making great accomplishments. Occasionally someone might tell you that you are indeed great. It could be that you are a great boss, or a great parent, or maybe a great friend. But I think there are too many categories of potential greatness to be great in all of them. I’ll hear about a supposedly great person, and while one achievement may indeed be great, that person severely lacks in one of what I consider some of the other major life categories. A Grammy Award winning musician may be a great singer, but he’s a lousy husband. A Top Chef may cook unbelievable dishes, but he’s a terrible father, and so on. So I have decided that for me I don’t want to focus on being great at one thing. Instead I want to be good at many: A good father, a good husband, a good boss, a good friend, a good son, a good brother, a good uncle, a good cook, a good driver and many mor...

by Adam Zack — January 28, 2026

“As leaders, we need to embrace failure like we do success.”

New items, campaigns, programs and initiatives are the keys to growth in our grocery business. To be successful they need great planning, thorough communication, coordinated execution and the patience for it to get established and grow some roots. It’s not easy and it’s not inexpensive. Too often a great product is just put on the shelf with little or no signage, story telling or promotion. No one is surprised when 30 days later very few have sold, or it goes out of code and like that, it’s buh-bye, never to be seen again. If only someone had loved and nurtured it, it could have been rookie of the year, or at least been an alternate on the all-star team. But that’s not what this is about. Let’s assume that we do all the right things. We like the product, promote it, tell its story and to our lament it still just sits there. It doesn’t resonate with the customer and we start feeling bad for it. It’s a failure. The shame. As leaders, we need to embrace failure like we do success. Well over 50% of the new items and programs we try won’t be around to see 2027. And that’s OK, because failure, when executed well, is the result of trying something new. There is no sh...

by Adam Zack — January 21, 2026

Jose came to the scene and promptly went to get a bucket and mop to scoop up the “accident.”

I was talking to one of my managers last week and we talked about how far he has come since I hired him as a janitor over 14 years ago. His name is Jose Avila and he is now the receiving manager and is trusted to check in all deliveries, open the store, close the store, handle money, and supervise some of the team. He pretty much does anything we may need him to do to make the store a lasting success. He’s a big advocate of constant communication and his go-to line is: We take care of business!

He told me the story of how recently an elderly customer had an “accident” in the bathroom, resulting in a gross mess that had to be cleaned up. Jose came to the scene and promptly went to get a bucket and mop and tools to scoop up the “accident.” As he began, a group of young employees questioned him on what he was doing and why he wasn’t calling someone in the janitorial department to clean up the mess. He looked up at them and said “I do this to remind myself where I came from.” From his early days when pretty much all he did was clean up messes to now when he oversees hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory, ...

by Adam Zack — January 14, 2026

“It’s a combination of poor manners and even poorer listening skills.”

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” – Stephen R. Covey

Over the almost 10 years I have been writing blogs for DW the topic that I probably have touched on the most is listening. I wrote about a guy who during any conversation just had to finish the other person’s sentences. It’s one of the most annoying habits (and it really is just a bad habit) that someone can have. I’ve noticed it a lot lately with a young guy and a lady I know. It’s a combination of poor manners and even poorer listening skills. I struggle with the urge to reach out with a quick snap of my fingers to change the behavior. Or just roll my eyes. A good friend of mine actually gets this super irritated look on his face and says “Can I finish talking?” when people cut him off before he’s done talking. So the question here is how can you effectively and tactfully point out the habit and give the lesson that listening is one of the greatest skills and most important tools that a leader needs for success? How can we as managers be better listeners and teache...

by Adam Zack — January 7, 2026

“The easiest job in the world is the Amateur Critic.”

The easiest job in the world is the Amateur Critic. You know the guy who goes into a restaurant and complains that his water is too cold or that the music’s too loud. He bitches about not enough (or too much) dressing on the salad and that the grill marks on the steak should be perpendicular to the grain of the meat and not parallel. They post extra long, mean reviews on Yelp that actually help no one. These types of people next lead into “If this were my restaurant, things would be different around here.” And sometimes the rich ones actually DO buy the restaurant or start their own with the intentions to offer just the right temperature water and perfect amount of dressing with 90 degree parallel grill marks on the steak. They soon find out that there are about 1000 other things that are more important that they didn’t consider and before you know it, there’s an available restaurant space on the market. It’s similar with food stores. The deli salads have spilled over, the bread section is wiped and for God’s sake why are there only 3 rotisserie chickens in the warmer? The wastebasket in the men’s room is almost full, the soda cans are not tur...

by Adam Zack — December 30, 2025

How to get an extra cent of profit on a sale and save an extra cent on operating expense is a talent that is becoming rarer and is often unappreciated.

Would you stop to pick up a penny if you saw it on the ground? How about a nickel? Quarter? Everyone I know would stop to pick up a dollar, that is certain. But back to that penny… I was thinking about it when I saw a penny in the parking lot yesterday. I picked it up, put it in my pocket, forgot to take it out when I put my pants in the clothes hamper and now it will probably come out in the washing machine or dryer for my wife to hear clanking around while the dryer turns as she tends to the laundry. You know the clack-clack-clack of copper on the metal dryer drum as it tumbles around. I should have just left that penny on the ground. It struck a nerve, though because grocery success or failure is literally built on pennies. Now it’s 2025 and the US government has ceased production of pennies for the first time in 232 years. In a business where a good net profit is 5 cents on the dollar, that penny that I didn’t pick up reduces my profit margin 20%. My dad is an old school grocer all the way through to his soul. I remember about 40 years ago he saw one o...

by Adam Zack — December 23, 2025

“As leaders, we are tasked with the responsibility of nurturing our employees
to have the basic values and skills required to serve our customers.”

In the documentary movie Three Identical Strangers, identical triplets were separated at birth and adopted by three separate families in New York. None of the adopting families knew that their new baby was one of three triplets, and it was only through a fluke chance that they discovered each other when they were 19 years old. Although they looked exactly the same, they were very different people, and as it turns out, part of an experiment to determine if it is nature or nurture that determines the type of person you ultimately become. It was a very cruel experiment with sad results for the triplets. So despite the cruel experiment, the question remains: Are our basic values of kindness, empathy, generosity, work ethic, honesty and caring learned from our family or were we born with them and they developed as we matured? Most parents strive to instill good traits in their children. No one wants to raise a kid that turns out to be a royal a-hole. Yet there are families with multiple kids, same parenting techniques, where one kid definitely turns out to be that a-hole. As leaders, we are tasked with the...

by Adam Zack — December 17, 2025

We don’t always get what we want…

Christmas time is loaded with lists. What gifts to buy (and for whom). Who’s coming to dinner. What to shop for. What’s on the menu. Who gets a card. Who doesn’t. Who’s naughty. Who’s nice. As kids, we were professional list-makers. We started early—September early—paging through the Sears catalog like it was sacred text. Pages were dog-eared, items circled, then reconsidered, added, removed, and debated as fall slowly marched toward Christmas. Nothing too unrealistic, but always just ambitious enough to feel hopeful. Lofty dreams, within reason.

Grandparents wanted to know what was on the list—and since I had three sets, the odds were pretty good. Between generous family and a birthday a week after Christmas, most lists reached a very satisfying level of cross-outs. It was an exciting season, and I was incredibly lucky, even if I didn’t always recognize it at the time. I cringe now thinking about the occasional disappointment over a missing Hot Wheels set or model airplane. What kind of spoiled kid pouts over that? (Answer: me.) It took a few years, but I eventually learned that we don’t always get what we want—whether it’s business goals, customer feedback, re...

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