Michael Shirts, longtime chief operating officer for Rosauers Supermarkets Inc., retired from his post on Feb. 3 after a 50-year career with the supermarket chain that began with his first job as a bag boy in Moscow, Idaho. 

Shirts, 66, held many positions throughout his career. After an initial stint bagging groceries, he went on to become a store manager at various Rosauers locations throughout the chain, which operates stores in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. In 1990, when the company was put up for sale, Shirts became a part owner when he and several other employees banded together and formed an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, purchasing 15 stores and selling off others. In 2000, when the employees sold the company back to Spokane-based URM Stores Inc., Shirts was appointed chief operating officer and senior vice president of marketing and merchandising. 

Shirts left the company for four years in his early 20s and joined the U.S. Air Force before returning to the Gem State and completing a degree in accounting and finance from the University of Idaho, while simultaneously working for Rosauers. 

Rosauers Supermarkets was established in 1934 by J. Merton Rosauer and is headquartered in Spokane. The company today is comprised of 18 Rosauers locations, four Super 1 Foods locations, and one Huckleberry’s Natural Market. Companywide, the grocery chain has a workforce of about 2,100. 

The Journal recently sat down with Shirts to discuss his bag boy-to-COO path, his best memories, and what he plans to do in retirement. 

How does it feel to have gone from bag boy to chief operating officer in your career? 

It’s just been one big blur, a whirlwind. But honestly, it has been great. I never regretted or second-guessed my decision to stay with the company. For anyone wanting to follow the same path, I would tell them to work hard and stay at it. When you’re dealing with retail and the public, it’s a career of self-sacrifice, at least at times. It’s not always easy to leave your family and work nights, weekends, and holidays. Especially in the early years, you don’t get to be home and help celebrate with your family like normal people would do. I would advise you to work through it. It’s worth it, but you must have an attitude of servitude. 

If you could have chosen a different path, what would you have done? 

I probably would have been in accounting. I enjoy numbers, and I like accounting. I took a short break from the store and went to the United States Air Force. I did basic training for six months in Texas and then the remaining time I was based out of Minot, North Dakota. I came back to Moscow to finish my schooling, and I was going to be an accountant and focus on tax, but I love working with people. It felt like a better course of action for me, so I stayed with the grocery side. 

Did you have any mentors throughout your career that you would attribute your success? 

Larry Geller would have been CEO when we became ESOP, and he was a tremendous mentor. Jeff Philipps, who was the CEO for 20 years, and now Cliff Rigsbee. Those three mentors have been instrumental in my formation of ideas and establishing values for the company and personally. 

Larry Geller is who led us for 10 years when we became an employee-owned company. He was the best and cared about everybody. He came to work at Rosauers the year prior and had a vision for how we could carry out this plan of being employee owned. Those early years of being an employee-owned company were very difficult because we were heavily leveraged and had to pinch pennies to pay down debt. But it was worth it in the end and a rewarding 10 years. We eventually became profitable and sold the company back to URM.

What challenges did you face in your career? 

Recently, COVID-19 was challenging for everybody in the grocery industry. It was challenging trying to maintain a safe work environment yet be there for people who needed groceries. And to also be there for our employees. Many of them were frightened about what was happening. We put plexiglass in the check stands so people didn’t have to be face-to-face. We bought every piece of plexiglass we could find and had our maintenance crew install them all over two days from Montana to Oregon. In the rural areas, not only did our employees push back against masking but we also got pushback from our customers. The way I approached it was, you can agree or disagree, but this is what we are going to do. This is what the health department has asked us to do. 

Another difficult thing was on Dec. 29, 2009, the roof collapsed at our Five Mile store at about 4 p.m. If it wasn’t for the sharp thinking of the assistant manager at the time who noticed something wasn’t right, things could have been worse. She evacuated the entire store and about 15 minutes later the ceiling collapsed. There would have been casualties. People would have died. I got the call at my office not too far from there and rushed to the store, arriving just after the ceiling collapsed. Nobody was hurt, and the fire department was already there. But then we had 125 employees that suddenly didn’t have a job. 

What about the highlights? 

The highlights are the philanthropic work that I got to do for the community. I’ve been the chairman for 23 years for the Rosauers Open, benefiting Vanessa Behan. That’s our annual golf tournament and the largest PGA sectional in the country. We get people from all over the Northwest every year. It’s groups of five and a total of 64 teams, morning and noon for two days, plus three days of professional tournament. We’ve raised about $3.5 million for Vanessa Behan since it was created 37 years ago. It wasn’t as big or as popular in the beginning but has picked up in the last couple of years. We average about $100,000 to $150,000 raised a year in the last couple of years. 

The other impactful memory is Tom’s Turkey Drive, benefitting Second Harvest. Tom (Sherry) is a great guy and very good to the Rosauers stores. He would come to the grand opening of stores and do ribbon cuttings because he loved what Rosauers did for the community. 

What do you plan to do in retirement? 

Play golf and travel. I’m still on retainer for a few months, and I’m still going to be part of the Rosauers Open and nonprofit activities. The relationships I’ve built through that are not work. It’s a joy to do that, and it goes toward great things. It’s fulfilling when you raise 12,000 meals for families in need on Thanksgiving.