LAKELAND, Florida — The lore around Publix goes as follows: George Jenkins was working as a store manager at a Piggly Wiggly in Winter Haven, Florida, when he tried to meet with the grocery chain’s new owner to talk business and introduce himself. The guy blew him off — his secretary said he was in important meetings, but Jenkins overheard him talking golf. So he quit and opened his own store, which he called Publix, right next to the Pig in 1930. He built the business gradually, its growth mirroring Florida’s, and finally took the company outside of the state in 1991, starting with Savannah, Georgia.Today, Publix employs some 250,000 people across 1,350 stores concentrated across the Southeast. It is the largest employee-owned company in the United States. Its workers — it prefers the term “associates” — get shares of stock in the company after working 1,000 hours in a year. The line among locals is that Publix is a place where truck drivers retire millionaires, though it’s not clear...
