Fred Harrison has a lot in common with the founder of Ritchies Stores, Thomas Ritchie. Thomas couldn’t have foreseen, when he dragged himself out of the surf from a shipwreck off Corsair’s Rock at the entrance to Port Philip Bay in 1842, that one day in Frankston he would found the first supermarket in Victoria. Likewise, Fred Harrison could hardly have envisaged that when he accepted a job as a trolley boy at Ritchies in Frankston in 1975, he would one day be the CEO.
Until then, Fred had been selling fruit and vegetables that he grew in his family’s Mount Eliza garden. “I was supplying fruit and vegetables from age fourteen to sixteen every second or third Friday. Apple cucumbers, passionfruit, silver beet, radishes – I’d grow anything and everything at home. Dad was generous; he drove me down to the Thompson Street store where the Bounty Shop is these days. I’d knock on the big back door of the greengrocer, and he’d come out with his big leather apron and his big long knife, and he used to buy everything I could bring him. It wasn’t much – maybe about ten passionfruit or ten apple cucumbers – I wasn’t bringing down a truckload, but I used to collect pocket money; twenty bucks a week and, in 1970, twenty bucks was a big deal.”
Fred used his pocket money to fund his passion for tennis. ‘It was how I funded my tennis clothes, rackets and balls. “I was in there one day dropping the produce off when Barry Cameron, who was the owner of Ritchies at the time, said, ‘You look like an industrious young lad; how about you come and work for us?’ So I started as a casual after school, and then when the holidays came, I’d work full-time through December and January and earn quite a bit of pocket money.”
Fred, a proud Frankston High School boy, then started studies at Monash University, but that didn’t stop him from working for Ritchies. “I’d have November, December, January, and February working those four months full-time. Back then, a lot of the managers would go on holidays, so I’d step up and fill in for them, and that’s how I got all the knowledge and experience.”
Fred wasn’t dominating at university. Fred laughs, “I was doing economics/politics and I didn’t pass. I bombed out, but I enjoyed it; it was good fun.” Fred was able to play tennis and became interested in the student union and protesting. “Our proudest moment was in 1976, locking Malcolm Fraser, the Prime Minister of the day, into the Rotunda for wanting to abolish free university and bring back fees. So we were rebels with a cause. It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, so all the news stations were there broadcasting live to the six o’clock news. We were all chanting with our placards, and the police couldn’t get in because we were all packed in like sardines. Malcolm Fraser agreed with the head of the movement to negotiate, so we all packed up and went home.”
Fred applied for a position as an assistant manager and got the job. Then came the decision: go back to university or take up the position. “I took up the assistant manager role and worked in the Thompson Street store for eighteen months. Then, a vacancy turned up at our Bayside store – our number one store – and I was lucky enough to get that appointment. I was the Bayside store manager for two years, then supervised across the stores. I became general manager in 1987 and then CEO in 1994 when Barry Cameron died.”
Fred still works with Mal and James Cameron, keeping the family tradition alive.
Could Fred still succeed today by selling his fruit and vegetables? Is there still a future for that kind of start in life? “I don’t see it, but there’s a lot of smaller start-ups which young people are driving. I think people now want to jump into digital IT setups; it’s not the old, you know, ‘I’m a baker’ or ‘I’m a butcher.’ We’re really, really struggling to get bakers, butchers, people who want to grow the fruit and veg and deliver it into the stores. People have drifted away from the trades and have gone the techno route. It’s a new era, but they’re still making a contribution to our overall community.”
Fred still sees a robust future for independent supermarkets, although that’s shrinking
Fred still sees a robust future for independent supermarkets, although that’s shrinking. “Back in the ’70s, independents were over 50 percent of the market. Today, we’re probably around 14 percent. But there is a space for independents – they’re very resilient, I think that was proven through Covid. That was our brightest moment because we were flexible and able to track stock down from smaller relationships that we had with different suppliers. We were very agile and able to hold up much better than the chains, and I think that brought us a bit more respect – among ourselves as well. That gave us a good ‘pep in the step’ and we reinvigorated.”
If you’ve ever wondered what a CEO actually does, Fred laughs and says he’s asked himself that question. “The CEO tends to be a jack of all trades and master of none. You generalise. If you asked me where I spend the majority of my time, it’s with the people part of the business. We’ve got a big team. We have 6,400 team members and there is a lot of stress and strain out there these days; mental health has become a big part. So, you’re constantly chatting with the team.
I steer the ship in some respects, but it’s really the team which is doing most of the work, and we work together. In the old days, it used to be one person who made all the decisions. Now, we have our national operations group of eleven people, and it’s that group that comes together to work on the best plans and ideas to run the business. I’m the face of Ritchie’s. I spend a lot of time on working groups and committees. I do a lot of travel – I try to get to stores when I can because people want to see the boss. There’s an incredible amount of variety. The good thing about my job is that no two days are the same.”
It’s 154 years since Thomas Ritchie started his first supermarket. See their website for more on his incredible story: ritchies.com.au/about-us/history