The hometown grocery chain has made deeper community engagement a business priority. Its growing relationship with the 43North Foundation is helping turn that intention into action.
We’re walking through the Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue with its top brass — John Persons (CEO), Ron Ferri (president) and Kristen Hanson (group vice president) — and it’s hard to get anyone to focus.
They’re too busy reconnecting with employees, customers and vendors. The interactions have a natural warmth that is unusual when the C-suite shows up.
But then again, this is not an ordinary company. Tops’ roots in Western New York stretch back a century, through longtime ownership by global retailer Ahold until it eventually fell back into local hands around 2007, with ownership of parent company Northeast Holdings now split between 250 private shareholders.
And then there were the catastrophic events of May 14, 2022, when a racist mass shooting at this very store shook Western New York to its core.
That moment made Tops’ relationship with the community deeper and more tangible. It took something that already existed — the mutual connection between a supermarket and its surroundings — and sharpened its focus.
“Giving back to the community has been part of this company since its inception, but the tragedy allowed us to think differently about how we approach our local supply chain,” Persons said. “People will always come to us with products, but now we’re making it a priority to find them through our own outreach and help them get it on the shelf.”
That’s true of two companies: Skincare Essentials by Jill, from local entrepreneur Jamilah Miller, and frozen dough brand Supchef, founded by local chef Alex Dispence. Both are now sold throughout Tops’ footprint.
Those companies have gone from prototypes and ideas into scalable businesses with real revenue through an ongoing partnership with Tops.
“The relationship with Tops has meant, literally, everything to Supchef,” Dispence said. “I was already working with them through my social media channel, and we identified this opportunity together. They took a chance on us.”
Now that support for entrepreneurs is hitting a new level.
Both Hanson and Persons are 43North Foundation Ambassadors, part of a program designed to deepen the relationship between existing businesses and Buffalo’s innovation economy. Persons provided early perspective that helped shape the Ambassador program, while Tops participated this year in the PowerUpTech internship program run by TechBuffalo, an affiliate of the 43North Foundation.
Tops already sells and distributes products from local CPG startups FoodNerd and JECA Energy Bars. Now Hanson has launched a series of meetings with startups from across Buffalo’s innovation economy. One of those connections led Tops to sign a contract with CoverRight, a former 43North winner that operates a digital insurance marketplace, to work with its pharmacies.
It’s partly an emotional strategy born of belief in this city, and partly a business strategy to nurture the community that Tops literally feeds.
“The more we can support local entrepreneurs, to bring and keep businesses in Buffalo, the better off we all are,” Hanson said.
The strategy is unfolding as Northeast Grocery, the parent company of Tops that also owns Price Chopper and Market 32, is performing well. Persons said last year was significantly stronger than the year before, with Tops benefiting from growth in its pharmacy business as Rite Aid has retrenched. The company has invested in remodeling and expanding pharmacies, helping drive additional traffic into its stores.
That same philosophy extends deep into Tops’ supply chain, which it sees as another way to circulate its purchasing power through the communities where its employees and customers live. The company sources its eggs from a large company in Clarence, its private-label ice cream from a large manufacturer in Akron and buys milk from New York farms, with much of that supply coming from Western New York.
That’s also why Tops participates in the Buffalo Purchasing Initiative, a coalition of 15 major Western New York employers working to create more opportunities for small local businesses. The initiative helps entrepreneurs navigate the less visible pieces of becoming a corporate supplier — from financing and manufacturing to understanding procurement — and connects them directly with major buyers.
“There are so many entrepreneurs who have a great product, but that’s all they’ve got,” Ferri said. “They don’t have the background in finance or manufacturing. BPI is helping them get there, so when they come to a company like Tops, they’re in a better position to get their foot in the door.”
All of which brings us back to that walk through the Jefferson Avenue store.
Persons, Ferri and Hanson aren't talking about “community” as something that exists outside the business. The employees stopping them in the aisles are part of it. So are the farmers supplying their stores, the entrepreneurs trying to get onto their shelves, the startups pitching new technology and the customers filling their carts.
Tops has spent decades building those relationships. Now it is becoming increasingly intentional about creating more of them, based on a belief that staying close to the place it calls home is both the right thing to do and good business.
It's not uncommon for supermarkets to pay lip service to many of these ideals. But there are very few retailers across the U.S. who are applying this level of time and energy into supporting local entrepreneurs.
“This is our home. These are our customers, our employees, our neighbors,” Persons said. “If we can use the scale of this company to help local businesses grow and create more opportunity here, that makes Western New York stronger. And ultimately, that makes Tops stronger, too.”
