Tom Sullivan has been with chain more than four decades

The end of the world as she’s known it was not Dec. 21, 2012, for Rosauers deli manager Candy Griffin.

That date will be Jan. 4, 2013, which is the day that her boss Tom Sullivan calls it a career with the Rosauers grocery chain after more than four decades with the company.

“It will be awful when he leaves,” said Griffin, who has worked for Sullivan for 25 years. “It will be sad. He can do everything here. He’s all over the store and he walks so fast, people don’t even notice him.

“He’s one of the good guys. He’s not afraid of work.”

Sullivan, 64, makes similar glowing remarks about his manager team, which he calls “the dream team.” Most of the department managers at Rosauers have been working with Sullivan for at least 15 years.

“I’ve always liked to surround myself with capable department managers and staff,” Sullivan said. “They teach me as if I was a co-worker. They make my job easier.”

He said that relationships with customers, vendors and employees, which can number anywhere from 90 to 125, have been the highlight of his career.

“It’s a service industry,” Sullivan said. “You develop a solid customer base, and you get to be on a first-name basis with customers.”

Sullivan started his grocery career in 1971 at his hometown Rosauers in Great Falls, where he worked his way from stock clerk to managing the grocery department.

He transferred to Kalispell’s Rosauers to become assistant manager in the mid-1970s, spent a year opening the Rosauers store in Missoula in 1977, then came back to Kalispell to be store manager in 1978.

Though most of his business knowledge has come from on-the-job training, he spent three years at the University of Montana, mostly taking business courses, and he was in the Montana National Guard for seven and a half years.

“I tried a lot of different career fields over the years, and this is the one I knew the best,” he said of the grocery business.

He saw the Kalispell Rosauers through a number of remodels at its old site, the current home of the Salvation Army Thrift Store, and the building of the current Rosauers on U.S. 93 South in 2000. The store more than doubled from its original 32,000 square feet with the move.

Rosauers has been able to maintain a more up-to-date line of products with its increased space, Sullivan said. It’s important to have that option, he said, with competition always a driving factor in the grocery business.

“It keeps you on your toes,” he said. “You have to be current in new product lines and keep a nice clean store. It can’t be shopworn.”

The industry has changed dramatically since the 1970s, Sullivan said, mostly to meet customer demand for increased services. In his store, he has seen additions of a pharmacy, an expanded deli and service meat counter as well as Huckleberry’s, an organic and natural-food store-within-a-store.

One of the biggest trends, though, has been in the hours that stores keep. When he began, traditional hours were 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with stores closed on Sundays and holidays.

“Then we went to 24 hours a day, and the only day we close is Christmas,” he said.

The Spokane-based Rosauers chain didn’t keep to the 24-hour cycle, though, as the chain eventually moved to a 5 a.m. to midnight schedule. That change didn’t make a difference in Sullivan’s long days, since his typical work weeks have always been around 55 hours.

Retirement will give him a break so that he can further pursue longtime hobbies, such as golf, and add a new one he’s been wanting to pursue, photography. And he’s got two children and a granddaughter to visit in the Seattle area.

He is also leaving because, he said, “after 41 years and seven months, it’s time.”