James “Jim” Ukrop, the civic booster and former leader of the Ukrop’s Super Market chain, has died at the age of 89.
Ukrop worked to boost economic and cultural growth in Richmond while also running the Ukrop’s grocery chain. Among other efforts, Ukrop helped form the downtown booster group Richmond Renaissance, create the Richmond Folk Festival and served as a founding director of the Richmond Performing Arts Alliance, which raised funds to create what is now the Dominion Energy Center for the Performing Arts.
Under the direction of Jim and his brother Bobby, the Ukrop’s supermarket chain grew to have the largest market share in the region for roughly two decades. The chain was as renowned for its customer service and philanthropy as it was for its standard-setting retail concepts. At its peak, Ukrop’s operated 29 locations, employed roughly 6,000 people, and held a reported value of more than half a billion dollars. [Disclosure: Jim Ukrop’s son Scott is on the board of VPM, which owns Style Weekly].
The grocery chain started in 1937 when Jim and Bobby’s parents Joe and Jacquelin opened their first store, a small 16-by-32-foot shop at 3111 Hull Street. That same year, Jim was born.
“[I’m] not sure which they thought was the best thing to happen to them that year, but I’m glad they did open the store,” Jim Ukrop told this reporter for a 2017 retrospective piece in the Chesterfield Observer. “I think I started working for the company when I came out of the cradle.”
When Jim turned 14, he told his father he wanted to get a paper route so that he could finally get paid. From then on, Joe began paying his son — 50 cents an hour to start.
“I worked there every day after school,” Jim said. “When I went off to college, that was like a four-year holiday.”
After graduating from William & Mary in 1960 with a business degree, Jim received a job offer from Kroger to work in southwest Virginia. His father countered with a higher salary to work as an assistant store manager. In 1963, Jim opened the family’s second grocery store, a 10,000-square-foot location near the intersection of Midlothian Turnpike and Buford Road.
When Jim’s brother Bobby finished his MBA at the University of Virginia in 1972, the two began running the company together. Being Baptists of Slovak descent, the Ukrops famously didn’t sell alcohol and were closed on Sundays out of the belief that the day was meant for worship, not business.
Photo of Jim Ukrop speaking in 1987 during the 50th anniversary of Ukrop’s. Photo courtesy of The Valentine. (Carl Lynn, photographer. Richmond Times-Dispatch Photograph Collection.)
Customer service at Ukrop’s became a part of Richmond lore. Tales abounded of employees changing customers’ flat tires in Ukrop’s parking lots, or customers being allowed to take their groceries home if they forgot to bring their checkbook with the expectation that they would return to pay later.
The grocery chain was innovative, aided by the Coca-Cola Research Council-sponsored Food Marketing Institute. Because of that organization, Ukrop’s was one of the first grocers to transition from price labels to barcode scanners, dramatically cutting checkout times. It was one of the first grocers in the region to offer soup and salad bars, as well as one of the first to distribute fresh prepared foods from its manufacturing kitchen.
In 1987, Ukrop’s and California-based Vons were the first grocers to employ customer loyalty cards. The cards allowed the company to track an individual shopper’s buying habits and send targeted coupons. The company had a long-standing policy of donating 10% of its pre-tax profits; the loyalty cards allowed customers to the direct the proceeds from their purchases to the charity of their choosing.
Employees were treated well, with the company investing in professional development and a profit-sharing retirement plan. Ukrop’s spent more money on its employees than it did on marketing. The chain was repeatedly named to Fortune’s list of the 100 best companies to work for.
Photo by Scott Elmquist
But the run of Ukrop’s Super Market came to an end in 2010 when Ukrop’s was sold to Ahold USA for $140 million. Though Ukrop’s held the largest market share in the region for two decades, in hindsight, Jim and Bobby Ukrop believed they had too many stores, pulling away customers from existing stores when they opened new locations.
While critics have contended that Ukrop’s could have survived if it sold alcohol and was open on Sundays, one of the biggest retail days of the week, Jim doubted it would have staved off an eventual sale.
“[Older, loyal customers] died and the fact that we were not open on Sundays and the fact that we did not sell beer and wine had a big impact on our ability to grow the business,” Jim said in 2017. “[But] with what’s going on now, I think if we waited five years to sell our stores, I don’t think they would be worth very much.”
Still, fans of Ukrop’s can enjoy many of their favorite foods from the chain — such as rainbow cookies, White House Rolls and Mrs. Marshall’s products — through Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods, which are now sold at many local grocery stores and Ukrop’s Market Hall on Patterson Avenue.
Cover of Style’s 10th annual Richmonders of the Year print issue, which named Bobby (left) and brother Jim Ukrop as that year’s winners for 1994.
On Instagram, Mayor Danny Avula wrote “This weekend, Richmond lost an incredible leader, laborer and friend. Jim Ukrop’s influence on the greater Richmond community has been profound. At a time when many business leaders found it easier to disengage from the city and its issues, Jim believed deeply in the importance of Richmond, and poured his time, energy, and resources into charting its course for the future.”
Lorna Wyckoff, founder of Style, said the publication wouldn’t have existed with Jim Ukrop.
“In the early days of alternative media, he took a big risk and replaced the popular but trashy-looking newsprint dollar savers with our magazine,” she wrote on Facebook. “It took no time before Tuesday’s papers were gone in hours. Advertisers were pleased. Whew. Ukrop’s had a large part to do with why we were successful so quickly.”
Katherine A. Rowe, president of Jim’s alma mater William & Mary, wrote: “Jim Ukrop was a lifelong innovator: pragmatic, savvy, and farsighted, and joyfully committed to the prosperity of his communities. His alma mater was the grateful beneficiary of his loyal leadership.”
