Corporate cultures are all very different and make all the difference in customers’ experience and loyalty. About 1.3 miles from our front door, a new mixed-use, “Town Center” has opened its first few stores. My partner and I are at the grocery store and the gym just about every day now. There couldn’t be a wider gap between their corporate cultures.

The grocery store, Wegman’s, is renowned for its fair treatment of its employees. They’re well paid, have excellent benefits and receive in-depth training in their specific specialties. The people behind the cheese counter, for example, all have been to multiple cheese-making regions and countries, at company expense, to learn the fineries of fromage. Tipping is not allowed in its pub. There’s a cadre of “Helping Hands” by the checkouts. I stopped by one morning to pick up sandwiches for a client meeting and discovered that the kitchen wouldn’t begin to make the ones I coveted until hours later. I explained my dilemma to a counter person, who brought out the executive chef. Not only did the chef drop everything and make those three sandwiches, she insisted on reviewing my “luncheon menu” to be sure I had a salt, a sweet and a fruit. Then she took the grapes I had selected for my "fruit course" into the kitchen, washed and towel-dried them.