Heritage Grocers Group expands business around innovative customer service

“Spectrum Enterprise has provided good support all throughout the journey. We have one relationship to manage. It’s all about making it easy and simpler as we grow.”

Prabash Coswatte, Chief Operating Officer, Heritage Grocers Group

A thriving supermarket company identified vast potential in expanding their chain of Hispanic-themed grocery stores by leveraging the connectivity and network solutions of a trusted technology partner.

Today, Heritage Grocers Group owns and operates 115 stores and counting. In the last two years, it has acquired and expanded upon its chains: Cardenas Markets in California, Arizona and Nevada; El Rancho Supermercado in Texas; and Tony’s Fresh Market in Illinois.

Prabash Coswatte, their Chief Operating Officer, considers their relationship with Spectrum Enterprise to be critical. “We see ourselves as a differentiator in our market on leveraging technology,” he says. “Specifically, having Spectrum Enterprise fiber connectivity in place is key for us. It’s not a secret sauce. It’s something that can help us move forward.”

Spectrum Enterprise installed Dedicated Fiber Internet (DFI), first at Cardenas Markets headquarters, then at four of their most rurally located stores, where prior efforts by others to set up network connections had been unsuccessful. Eventually, each Cardenas Markets store in California, Nevada and Arizona, 65 in all, got their own fiber circuit.

“Uptime is critical for our store operators,” Coswatte says. “That means having a network that is always up and running.”

Maintaining and refining that network, while helping synchronize its various parts, requires a solution that incorporates the latest advances in firewall protection and WiFi access, and allows bandwidth usage to be scaled up as needed. Spectrum Enterprise had the answer: Managed Network Edge.

For Coswatte, the investment in network and connectivity solutions pays off in a multitude of ways. Not only are customers getting what they want quicker, but store operators and employees are enjoying higher job satisfaction in a business that is ultimately about people.

“Our business is not technology,” Coswatte says. “Technology is a layer that supports our business.”