Stew Leonard’s expects a million for dinner

Stew Leonard Jr. with nephew Jake Tavello, the first member of the third generation of Leonard”™s to join the business, at Jaindl Turkey Farms in Orefield, Pa. (Photo courtesy of Stew Leonard’s)

Over the next few weeks Stew Leonard”™s, Fairfield County”™s home-grown regional grocery giant, will welcome approximately a million people through its stores in Connecticut and New York as it ramps up for the start of the holiday season.

“Normally we get about 50,000 customers a week and we usually figure they at least come with one person we get 100,000 people a week,” said Stew Leonard Jr. president and CEO of Stew Leonard”™s.

“Thanksgiving week we will double the number of customers,” he said. “It will be 200,000 customers and that is just one store.”

Leonard said across the company”™s four locations in Norwalk, Danbury, Newington, Yonkers, N.Y., and including the independently owned and operated Stew Leonard”™s Wines stores, the company expects a million customers over the Thanksgiving week.

“It”™s the kickoff for the festival of food and wine for the end of the year,” he said.

Christmas is a more lucrative season, but Thanksgiving begins what amounts to a month of celebration from small gatherings and work parties to a full calendar of religious events and holidays feasts.

“Now the drumbeat in the woods is starting to bang,” Leonard said.

In preparation for the flood of shoppers, Leonard has taken on “hundreds” of seasonal staff across his stores.

The company normally employs more than 2,000 people across its stores, but that number will increase to more than 2,500 with the addition of seasonal employees.

Already this holiday season Leonard has seen positive signs that the consumers are rebounding from years of belt tightening as even Halloween spending was up, he said.

“We saw an uptick in spending just in Halloween,” he said. “I would say right now, we are very bullish on the holidays, we are very excited just from the number of pumpkins we sold this year, people were buying three pumpkins instead of one.”

The real measurement of the economic health of his customers is what Leonard refers to as his “mashed potato index.”

Stew Leonard’s donates thousands of turkeys every year.

“We sell potatoes at a buck a pound, and we sell them all mashed up ready to go at 4$ a pound. If people are feeling good about the economy the $4 potatoes are going to go up in sales,” he said.

This Thanksgiving Leonard expects more than a million pounds of turkey to be sold, not to mention the tens of thousands of pounds of potatoes and yams.

“Thanksgiving week we sell about 15,000 pounds of herbs ”” rosemary, sage and thyme especially,” he said. “A normal week is around 1,000 pounds.”

In addition, the company will donate more than 2,100 turkeys throughout the Connecticut and New York  communities where its stores are located to help provide Thanksgiving meals for families in need via more than 100 churches, civic groups, elderly housing and senior nutrition programs and schools.

Besides the perceived increase in spending, Leonard has noticed other consumer trends, including an increase desire for “naked” meat products ”” animals raised on free-range facilities without the use of antibiotics or growth hormones ”” as well as a preference for catering.

“The catering side of our business has been doubling every year at Thanksgiving,” Leonard said. “Today people are so time pressed, that what they want to do is have us prepare it, just like they would at home ”” they don”™t want it frozen, they don”™t want preservatives in it.

If anything can be said to be an indicator of an improving economy, Leonard is preparing to open a new store on Long Island in January 2016.

Announced in February 2015, the Farmingdale, N.Y., store will be the company”™s fifth since opening in Norwalk in 1969.

“This has been a dream of our family”™s since 2002, when we first started exploring options for a new store on Long Island,” Leonard said in a statement.