Being responsive to our customers enabled Albertsons to become one of the largest food and drug retailers in the world. Today our company has over 92 million square feet of retail selling space, comprising a powerful network of combination food and drug stores, stand-alone drugstores and fuel centers.
Across our retail network of more than 2,300 stores, we ask our 200,000 associates to come to work each day focused on doing just one thing... "working harder to make life easier for our customers." We are making progress on many fronts to deliver on that promise. As an example, our company-wide customer service program "Service First, Second to None" asks for an absolute commitment from every associate to provide excellent service during every one of the 1.4 billion shopping trips our customers make to our stores each year. This quest for superiority in customer service drives us to gain better insight about our customers in order to more effectively serve their wants and needs. In 2002, customer service scores improved company-wide and we continued to conduct extensive consumer research to help us determine what our customers believe the best value proposition in the industry should be.
To fulfill their desires, we demonstrated how quickly we could bring innovative ideas to market this year. One example was our "Focus On Fresh" initiative in which our whole supply chain was upgraded to guarantee the availability of the freshest offerings throughout the store. These include the freshest fruits and vegetables, the best floral offering, in-store bakery, and the best meat and seafood in the industry, as well as the freshest dairy and shelf-stable groceries and beverages.
Our company operates some of the most trusted brands in America. We believe that our customer-focused approach to growth backed by the promise of "working harder to make life easier for our customers" is positioning our brands better than the competition to win customers for life!
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