HAPPY 75TH ANNIVERSARY, PUBLIX

In 1930, with the nation falling into the depths of the Great Depression, the late George W. Jenkins opened a grocery store in Winter Haven, Florida that would become the foundation for what would eventually become one of the most successful supermarket chains in the Eastern United States, now known as Publix Super Markets.

Jenkins' idea was for his grocery to be a place where "shopping is a pleasure", and it is an idea that continues to this day. One of the ideas that has also helped in Publix' success is for employees to have an ownership stake in the business by providing them the opportunity to own stock.

Publix is entering it's 75th anniversary on a couple of good notes. As it's annual report is scheduled for release today, the company announced that it's stock prices has reached an all-time high, at $64 a share, up nearly 9.5 percent just from October. If you had been fortunate enough to own Publix stock in January, 1992, when the stock split five-for-one, and still holding on to that stock today, it has increased in value 504 percent!

In addition, the Lakeland-based supermarket chain received the highest ranking on customer satisfaction from the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index, released by the University of Michigan. And an Orlando Sentinel story Friday stated that Publix could be moving toward delving deeper into the growing Hispanic market, announcing it would begin it's own brand of Hispanic products under the names of Publix Acentos and Publix Sabor and possibly converting one of it's stores to a Hispanic inventory format.

And while Publix has expanded in recent years into the Carolinas and Alabama, company officials have had to deny rumours that it was out to purchase two other supermarket chains which are big in the Southeast, Mauldin, South Carolina-based BI-LO and Birmingham, Alabama-based Bruno's

I'm not a huge Publix fan. Although their deli is great, their prices are in many cases too expensive for my budget. But the chain means a lot to many people in Polk County and throughout Central Florida. Congratulations!