Dive Brief:
- Grocery Outlet has appointed Christopher Miller as its next CFO, effective Jan. 6, according to a Wednesday press release.
- Miller will take over the position from interim CFO Lindsay Gray, who has temporarily filled in since Charles Bracher’s departure in March.
- Miller’s appointment marks the latest C-suite change for the discounter, which announced a new chief information officer in August and the abrupt exit of former President and CEO RJ Sheedy in October.
Dive Insight:
Miller brings decades of financial experience to Grocery Outlet as the discounter looks to turn around its earnings performance.
Miller will join Grocery Outlet from Shamrock Foods Company, the largest family-held food service distributor in the western U.S., where he was CFO for two years. Before Shamrock Foods, Miller spent 15 years at Core-Mark Holding Co., a fresh, chilled and frozen merchandise distributor to convenience stores. Miller also held finance and accounting roles at Cost Plus World Market, Levi Strauss & Co. and Hermès.
Miller will report to Grocery Outlet Chairman and interim President and CEO Eric Lindberg Jr.
“Chris is an accomplished CFO who brings a wealth of finance, accounting, business strategy, and public company experience to the table that we are confident will benefit our independent operators, shareholders, and our business as we continue to grow,” Lindberg said in a statement.
Miller will receive a signing bonus of $100,000 and a yearly base salary of $550,000, according to a Grocery Outlet filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Each year, he will be eligible for a cash bonus, target bonus and equity grants tied to the company’s incentive plan.
Grocery Outlet announced last December that Bracher, who served as the company’s CFO for more than a decade, would leave in March and that Gray would fill in until the company found a permanent replacement. Once Miller joins next month, Gray will return to her previous role as senior vice president of accounting and principal accounting officer for the grocer.
“We would like to thank Lindsay for stepping up and leading as Interim CFO during a pivotal year for the business, and we are fortunate to have her continued leadership over our accounting and reporting function moving forward,” Lindberg said.
Miller is joining Grocery Outlet at a time when the company is working through financial headwinds, including a massive technology disruption stemming from a vendor transition last year that has impaired the company’s data visibility and slowed system speeds.
Grocery Outlet’s same-store sales growth continues to slow
Since hitting the $1 billion mark for net sales in the second quarter of fiscal 2023, Grocery Outlet has surpassed that figure four additional quarters. In its most recent earnings results, though, the company posted gross margin and net income decreases, stagnant comparable-store sales growth of 1.2% and $429 million of debt — up $50 million from the same quarter last year.
Earlier this year, Grocery Outlet named Ramesh Chikkala, a former Walmart executive, as its first chief operations officer, hired Sandeep Chawla as its new CIO and tapped Lindberg to temporarily fill the roles vacated by RJ Sheedy in October. Sheedy had served as the company’s president for five years and was CEO for nearly two years.
Lindberg told investors in November that the company’s poor performance led to Sheedy’s departure: “We finally got to a point after the last board meeting where we sat down, we had a frank conversation and we had an agreement to move forward.”
