Fareway Stores has completed the move to its new corporate headquarters in Johnston, Iowa, a suburb west of Des Moines that’s about a 30-minute drive from the grocer’s former base in Boone, north of the city.
However, the Boone complex continues to be home to more than 100 staff members on the wholesale/warehouse side of the operation, according to Elias Johnson, who joined Fareway in October as VP of corporate outreach and communications, just a few weeks before the move was completed.
“Boone will always be home for Fareway,” Johnson said.
But there are several benefits the headquarters move to the 42,000-square-foot building in Johnston yields for Fareway.
For one, it has brought the buying, marketing, HR and communications teams as well as company executives – about 150 people currently – under one roof.
“The collaboration portion of the move is awesome,” he said. “It’s been really nice to get everybody in a collaborative space that’s inviting. It’s state of the art, and it allows us to be more creative and have better communication and follow-up on all our different tasks and duties that we’re trying to do each day.
“We’re able to get to know each other on a more personal level, too, just by being in the same space,” Johnson added. “You don’t realize that even a short distance across town creates some obstacles to being able to get to know each other and have conversations and laugh together and work through challenges.
“I can tell just by looking at people every day that they are excited to come [here] and get to work.”
Fareway provides lunch each day, at no cost to employees, at the “Fueling Station.”
Some days it’s a salad bar and protein; other days the chef in Fareway’s Food Lab needs feedback on recipes.
Johnson said that CEO Reynolds Cramer jokingly says, “We’ve got a large group of people that don’t mind being guinea pigs.”
Fareway encourages team members to invite family, friends and business associates to come and enjoy the Fueling Station’s common spaces as well.
Convenience factored into the move
In addition to those inner-company benefits, there are outward benefits as well. Being in the Des Moines metro area, closer to the airport, makes it easier to meet with supply chain partners face to face, which becomes ever more important as Fareway continues on its strong growth trajectory. Six new stores are expected to open in 2025, joining the 140 existing locations in seven states (Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota).
“And that’s going to continue for the next 10 years – at least that many – as we expand and continue to grow our footprint here in the Midwest,” Johnson said.
That growth also creates a need for more warehouse space, so Fareway is retrofitting space on the campus in Boone, where the grocer “will continue to be able to grow,” he said.
When contemplating the move to Johnston a few years ago, Fareway kept the future squarely in mind. The new headquarters is not completely full yet, but when it is, the potential is there to expand into adjacent existing structures.
The Iowa Bankers Association building in Johnston that Fareway purchased had a good footprint, but inside it was completely remodeled, Johnson said.
“We took everything down to the studs and reimagined the space,” he said. Stairs were added where none had been before, and conference rooms of different sizes were added to accommodate meetings small and large.
The headquarters relocation obviously changed the commute for team members – actually shortening it for a number of them. Many of Fareway’s employees already were living outside Boone County, closer to Des Moines suburbs like Ames and Ankeny, according to Johnson.
“It’s just been kind of a natural shift of where our talent is being found, and a lot of them want to live closer to the Des Moines metro for amenities, education, transportation,” said Johnson, who spent 15 years in broadcast television news in Des Moines prior to joining Fareway. He had worked in Phoenix and Reno before returning to his home state of Iowa; he’s originally from the small town of Manson.
In just seven weeks on the job, he already has found a lot of reasons to love working for Fareway. One is “regular” hours that allow him to attend his three kids’ evening events (he used to work 2-11 p.m.). Another is the possibility of having a round of afternoon golf with friends when his schedule allows.
And, very importantly, “I’m joining an industry that is growing and a company that is growing. It’s really fun to be part of something that’s growing and be able to use my skills through video and storytelling and communicating,” Johnson said.
In his previous broadcast news role, he also worked with many of the same charitable organizations that Fareway supports, “so the transition has been not so much of a ‘get to know you’ phase as it is a ‘how can I serve you in this new space, in this new role, so we can hit our goals’ and also show that we lead with love and support our communities that we’re in.”
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