FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Florida Business & Retail Industry Press Desk Date: April 15, 2026
From a Single Store in Winter Haven to 1,432 Locations Across the American Southeast: Publix Super Markets Marks a Historic Year at Its Annual Meeting — and Signals a Future Built on Community, Character, and Continued Growth
Florida’s most trusted grocery chain honors its people, deepens its charitable footprint, posts $62.7 billion in sales, and makes strategic moves from Polk County to Biscayne Boulevard that reinforce its singular standing as both an economic institution and a community cornerstone
Yesterday’s Stockholders Meeting Said Everything About What Makes Publix Different
LAKELAND, FL — Most corporate annual meetings are unremarkable affairs — a reading of financials, a rotation of board seats, a polite applause and an adjournment. What happened inside the Publix annual stockholders’ meeting in Lakeland yesterday, on April 14, 2026, was something genuinely different.
Six people stood before their colleagues and company leadership not to discuss earnings per share or supply chain optimization — but to be recognized for the volunteer hours they gave to children’s hospitals, food banks, community greenways, and families in crisis. Six Publix associates, one from each retail division and one from the corporate support team, received the Mr. George Community Service Award — the company’s most personal honor, named for the man who started it all.
“George Jenkins once said, ‘We are not only in the grocery business, we’re in the people business,'” said Publix CEO Kevin Murphy at the ceremony. “That means taking care of our customers, communities and each other. Our 2026 recipients take these words to heart and are fulfilling our mission to be involved as responsible citizens in the communities we serve.”
Since the award was established in 1995, 165 Publix associates have received it. They represent something that no balance sheet can fully capture: the reason people drive past three other grocery chains to shop at Publix. Not just because the produce is fresher or the deli is better, but because the people behind the counters genuinely belong to the places they serve.
That philosophy — people first, business second, community always — is the thread that connects a 1930 storefront in Winter Haven to 1,432 stores across eight states, $62.7 billion in annual revenue, and a company that has been the grocery of record for most Florida households for the better part of a century.
The 2026 Mr. George Community Service Award Recipients
This year’s six honorees exemplify the breadth and depth of how Publix associates engage their communities across the company’s footprint:
Lisa McLoughlin, Store Manager, Lakeland Division, St. Petersburg, Florida — Volunteering since her earliest days as a cashier in 2004, Lisa has partnered with All Children’s Hospital, Tampa Bay Watch, the March of Dimes, Hope Villages of America, and Ronald McDonald House. Her most meaningful work has centered on the Ronald McDonald House, where she witnesses firsthand the impact on families navigating medical crises with children in hospital care. “My grandmother left an amazing legacy. Her door was always open to others. My dad continues that legacy, and I hope to keep it going through my actions and inspire my children to do the same,” Lisa said.
Tabitha Davis, Assistant Store Manager, Charlotte Division, Winston-Salem, North Carolina — A United Way Community Impact Volunteer of the Year in 2018, Tabitha spent years helping secure funding for what became the largest greenway project in the Triad area of central North Carolina — a connected bike and walking path linking four major cities and creating safe school routes for children. “When we were able to share this project with the local schools, the parents were so thrilled to know their kids could get to school safely,” she said. “It’s the moment, for me, that data became a human story.”
John Doran, Publix Super Markets Charities Executive Director, Lakeland, Florida — Recognized on the support side, Doran leads the charitable arm that has quietly directed more than $78 million to hunger-relief programs across the Southeast since 2015, supported over 300 housing nonprofits with a $15 million donation, and funded vehicles, food centers, and capital improvements for Feeding America partner banks across all eight Publix states.
Additional recipients honored at yesterday’s meeting included associates from the Atlanta Division, Jacksonville Division, and Miami Division — each recognized for sustained commitments to their local communities that extend well beyond their professional roles.
The Numbers That Put 2025 in Perspective
$62.7 Billion in Retail Sales. $4.7 Billion in Net Earnings. Zero Layoffs.
Publix’s full fiscal year 2025 results, reported earlier this year, delivered a performance that few retailers of any size matched:
Annual retail sales reached $62.7 billion — a 5 percent increase over the prior year driven by comparable-store sales growth of 3.5 percent and an active new-store opening program throughout the Southeast.
Net earnings came in at $4.7 billion, up 2.1 percent from fiscal 2024, representing a profit margin that reflects the operational discipline of a privately owned company accountable to its associates and founding-family shareholders rather than to quarterly Wall Street guidance.
The fourth quarter alone generated $16 billion in sales — a 2.8 percent increase over Q4 2024. When adjusted to strip out the hurricane-related pantry stocking that inflated Q4 2024 figures, the underlying growth rate for Q4 2025 rises to 4.1 percent — a figure that reflects genuine consumer preference rather than crisis demand.
These results were achieved by a company operating 1,432 stores across eight states, employing over 260,000 associates, running nine distribution centers and eleven manufacturing facilities, and maintaining a stockholder structure in which the workforce itself holds the dominant ownership position. That ownership structure — unique among American grocery retailers of comparable scale — is not incidental to performance. It is causal. People who own a piece of what they build take care of it differently, and the financial results reflect that truth year after year.
The company has also never executed a layoff in its 96-year operating history — a distinction that, in an industry notorious for seasonal cuts, post-merger eliminations, and efficiency-driven reductions, stands as perhaps the most concrete expression of the values George Jenkins installed in 1930 and that Kevin Murphy, the 42nd year associate who worked his way from front service clerk in Margate to chief executive, continues to steward today.
Publix Charities: $15 Million to Housing, $78 Million to Hunger, and a Foundation Celebrating 60 Years
Giving on a Scale That Reaches Every Corner of the State
Behind the retail operation sits a philanthropic engine that has been running continuously since 1967. Publix Super Markets Charities — incorporated in Florida, funded by the company and its customers, and holding assets of more than $233 million — represents one of the most active corporate charitable foundations operating in the American Southeast.
The foundation’s priorities mirror the lived realities of the communities surrounding Publix stores: youth development, education, hunger relief, and housing. Together they address the most consequential gaps in community wellbeing that a grocery-anchored institution is uniquely positioned to observe and act on.
Feeding the Southeast — $78 Million and Counting
A $15 million donation in 2025 brought Publix Charities’ total investment to help end hunger to over $78 million since 2015. Those funds have supported more than 400 food banks and nonprofit partners, funded vehicle fleets capable of serving 1,500 mobile pantries annually, and helped build four Atlanta Community Food Center facilities that together deliver up to two million pounds of food per year to underserved neighborhoods.
In South Florida, Publix Charities funds support the Broward Partnership’s food services program, which provides three balanced meals daily to approximately 500 people. In Central Florida, a $50,000 contribution to A Gift for Teaching funded a pallet reach truck that sustains the nonprofit’s mission of providing essential classroom supplies to public school teachers serving students in need. In Jacksonville, a donation to the Museum of Science and History underwrites its Mobile Early Learning Program, taking hands-on STEM education directly to children who lack access to in-person museum experiences.
The reach of these contributions extends far beyond financial transactions. Publix associates logged over 55,000 volunteer hours in 2025 at nonprofits focused on food insecurity — human effort that multiplies the dollar-denominated giving with direct community presence.
Housing: $15 Million to Over 300 Nonprofit Partners
Publix Super Markets Charities donated $15 million to more than 300 nonprofit housing partners throughout the Southeast focused on housing assistance, including Habitat for Humanity affiliates. In Sarasota alone, Habitat for Humanity received a $175,000 gift from Publix Charities to address the region’s affordable homeownership crisis — one of dozens of hyper-local investments that combine into a statewide housing support network touching communities from Pensacola to Homestead.
The George W. Jenkins Scholarship: Opportunity Born From Adversity
The George W. Jenkins Scholarship program, funded by Publix Charities, rewards high school graduates who have overcome significant hardships in their lives. Named for the founder himself, the scholarship does not simply reward academic achievement. It specifically seeks students who have faced serious personal obstacles — financial hardship, family disruption, health crises — and found a way through. The program reflects a direct extension of George Jenkins’ belief that the purpose of success is to share it.
Ten Straight Years as United Way’s No. 1 Corporate Partner
In 2025, Publix raised nearly $5.4 million for United Way, earning the recognition of being their number one corporate partner for the tenth consecutive year. A decade of leading the organization’s corporate fundraising reflects not a one-time campaign but a sustained, store-by-store, register-by-register commitment that has become embedded in the Publix customer experience.
Environmental Stewardship: More Than 150 Million Pounds of Produce Donated, 3.2 Million Trees Planted
George Jenkins was famously intolerant of waste — a value so central to his operating philosophy that it remains written into Publix’s mission statement today. Environmental responsibility at Publix is not a marketing posture. It is an operational principle expressed in measurable terms.
Since 2020, over 150 million pounds of fresh produce have been purchased and donated to local Feeding America partner food banks to help neighbors facing food insecurity. The produce is good to eat but commercially unsalable — fruit and vegetables that would otherwise be discarded are instead rerouted to food banks serving families across the company’s eight-state footprint, converting potential waste into nutrition.
Since 2016, Publix has planted over 3.2 million trees through its collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation to restore forests of greatest need across its operating states. Additionally, the company works with the Arbor Day Foundation, Audubon Florida, and the National Park Foundation to restore 446 million gallons of water annually — a partnership that addresses the freshwater sustainability challenges facing Florida and the broader Southeast with the scale and consistency that only a company of Publix’s size and footprint can bring.
The company’s Good Together environmental campaign, now in its third year, raised more than $2.6 million in 2025 through customer and associate register donations to support water conservation, park restoration, and reforestation projects. In 2025, more than 7,000 associates volunteered across more than 150 projects during Publix Serves weeks — cleaning parks, planting trees, restoring water habitats, and contributing thousands of hours to environmental causes in the neighborhoods surrounding their stores.
Publix recycled more than 606 million pounds of cardboard in 2024, alongside over 25 million pounds of mixed plastic and nearly 11 million pounds of mixed paper — waste management at a scale that has measurable impact on the regional waste stream across a geography where Publix is present in virtually every significant community.
Coral reef conservation is another dimension of the company’s Florida-specific environmental commitment. Publix has partnered with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership for 14 years to support responsible harvesting and fund projects that protect, conserve, and restore Florida’s coral reef ecosystems — recognizing that the state’s marine environment is both an ecological treasure and an economic foundation for the fishing and tourism industries that employ hundreds of thousands of Floridians.
The New Store Experience: Reinventing What It Means to Grocery Shop in Florida
A Prototype Built for How People Actually Want to Live
The newest generation of Publix stores opening across Florida in 2026 is not an incremental refresh. It is a rethinking of the relationship between a grocery store and the community it anchors — built around the recognition that modern customers expect more from their shopping experience than efficient access to product.
The expanded-format prototype, rolling out at 55,701 square feet — 10 to 20 percent larger than a traditional Publix footprint — introduces a suite of features that transform the store from a destination of necessity into a destination of choice:
Publix Pours places a full beer, wine, and coffee bar at the center of the shopping floor. Kombucha on tap, locally roasted coffee, acai bowls, and smoothies give customers a reason to arrive, settle in, and let the visit breathe. A glass of wine at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday is no longer something that requires a different stop.
The expanded deli moves well beyond traditional sliced meats and prepared salads into made-to-order territory: burrito and nacho bowls assembled fresh to specification, whole pizzas crafted from scratch, housemade pasta dishes, and a charcuterie program featuring more than 200 artisan cheeses from across the United States and around the world alongside international selections of olives, antipastos, and hummus.
A specialty popcorn station pops fresh batches throughout the day in flavors including cheddar, caramel, dill pickle, Oreo, kettle, and salt and pepper. It is a detail that sounds small and delivers outsized loyalty — the kind of unexpected delight that turns a routine errand into a remembered experience.
Sushi chefs prepare hand-rolled selections daily at the seafood counter. The meat department offers custom cuts on request. The bakery produces fresh bread and rolls from scratch every morning. The wine department carries a curated selection of fine wines made with organic grapes alongside the full conventional range.
Where the property configuration allows, the new stores include upstairs and outdoor mezzanine seating, converting the grocery store into a place where lunch can happen, where neighbors encounter each other, and where the store becomes part of the neighborhood’s daily social rhythm rather than merely its supply chain.
Drive-thru pharmacies are standard in the new prototype — a feature that has become essential for the growing share of customers who manage multiple prescriptions and need the ability to collect them without leaving a vehicle, including the elderly, the mobility-limited, and parents of young children.
Florida Openings: A Statewide Expansion in Full Acceleration
Publix’s 2026 Florida opening calendar reflects the company’s recognition that the state’s population growth, particularly in rapidly expanding suburban corridors, is creating demand for grocery access that the existing store network was not built to meet.
St. Johns County — SilverLeaf, St. Augustine opened March 26 as the single largest Publix store in Northeast Florida history at 55,701 square feet, anchoring the retail center of a master-planned community projected to reach more than 16,000 homes by 2047. The store debuted every element of the new prototype — Pours café, expanded deli, drive-thru pharmacy, adjacent liquor store, and a community donation of $5,000 in non-perishable food items to Epic-Cure delivered by the Publix Good Together truck at opening.
Clearwater opened March 5 at Clearwater Plaza on South Missouri Avenue with nearly 47,000 square feet and a drive-thru pharmacy serving Pinellas County’s dense residential market.
Spring Hill followed on April 2, addressing the underserved grocery corridor in Hernando County’s fast-growing population belt.
Tampa Bay region added three locations in rapid succession through early spring — among the most active short-term opening runs in the Tampa area in years.
Winter Haven at The Shoppes at Country Club opens April 30 — a date that carries weight beyond its operational significance. Winter Haven is the city where George Jenkins opened the very first Publix on September 6, 1930. The original building, still standing today on the National Register of Historic Places, is a few miles from where the new store will serve the next generation of Polk County families. Ninety-six years of growth, and Publix is still opening stores in the city where it began.
Fernandina Beach is expected to open in the third quarter of 2026 at Island Walk Shopping Center — a full-prototype replacement for a location demolished after closing in April 2025, brought back to life in the expanded format that Northeast Florida’s growth demands.
North Miami on Biscayne Boulevard has a pre-application filed with Miami-Dade County for a two-story, 55,000-square-foot Mega Publix — a vertical buildout that stacks a liquor store and a 232-space parking garage directly above the retail floor, solving the land scarcity problem in Miami’s dense urban corridors through architectural ambition rather than compromised square footage. The site at 11380 Biscayne Boulevard will be among the largest single Publix stores in Miami-Dade County when complete.
Sunrise in Broward County has plans filed for a new location adjacent to University Drive — further evidence that the company is methodically filling coverage gaps in South Florida’s most populous markets.
A $130.4 Million Bet on Florida’s Neighborhood Centers
In January 2026, Publix made a real estate move that spoke volumes about its long-range intentions. The company acquired six shopping centers for $130.4 million — four of them in Central Florida, in Orlando, Lake Mary, Windermere, and St. Cloud, plus one in Fort Myers and one across the Georgia line in Newnan. The deal totaled 411,980 square feet of fully leased commercial space.
The strategic rationale is straightforward: when Publix owns the land and buildings surrounding its stores, it controls the quality of the commercial environment its customers experience. It can curate the tenant mix. It can maintain the parking lot, the lighting, the landscaping. It can accelerate renovation timelines without seeking permission from a third-party landlord. And it transforms Publix from a leaseholder in a neighborhood to a landowner committed to its long-term health.
For Central Florida specifically — where four of the six acquisitions are concentrated — the move signals that Publix views the region’s continued population and commercial growth as a decades-long commitment worth securing at the property level, not just the operational one.
Publix and the Orlando Magic: Two Florida Institutions, One Partnership
In February 2026, Publix formalized something that had been culturally true for years: it is the Official Supermarket of the Orlando Magic, entering a multiyear collaboration with the NBA franchise that ties together two pillars of Central Florida community life.
The pairing reflects the company’s deepening integration into the cultural identity of the communities it serves — not just as a place to buy ingredients, but as an active participant in the sports, arts, education, and civic life that give those communities their character. For the Orlando Magic’s fan base — which draws heavily from the same Orange and Seminole County households that have shopped Publix for generations — the partnership confirms what many already felt intuitively: that Publix belongs to Orlando the way Orlando belongs to Florida.
The People Who Lead Publix: A Company Grown From Within
Kevin Murphy, the current Chief Executive Officer of Publix Super Markets, began his career at the company in 1984 as a front service clerk in Margate, Florida. He became a store manager in 1995, a district manager in 2003, a regional director in 2009, and Vice President of the Miami Division in 2014. He rose through senior vice president of retail operations to president in 2019 before ascending to CEO.
He is the recipient of the George W. Jenkins Award — the company’s highest honor for associates who embody the founder’s spirit — and the President’s Award, Publix’s two most prestigious internal recognitions. He did not arrive at the top job through merger activity, private equity placement, or executive headhunting. He arrived through 42 years of accumulating the trust of the company’s associates, customers, and stockholders one store at a time.
That pattern — leadership earned through decades of internal advancement rather than imported from outside — is not accidental at Publix. It is the operating model. The people running the company are the people who built it. They understand its culture because they lived it. And they carry forward a founder’s philosophy not as a branding exercise, but as a genuine personal commitment.
What Publix Means to Florida, Measured and Unmeasured
The Measurable Dimensions
The tangible economic impact of a company that operates 890 stores in Florida, employs the majority of its 260,000-plus associate workforce in the state, manufactures goods at multiple Florida facilities, sources from thousands of Florida suppliers, and generates billions in state and local tax revenue annually is genuinely difficult to overstate.
The company’s nine distribution centers and eleven manufacturing facilities — producing bakery items, dairy products, deli goods, and prepared foods for stores across the network — sustain manufacturing employment and supply chain activity that radiates outward from Central Florida and into surrounding communities. Every new Publix store opening triggers a cascade of construction, outfitting, hiring, and ongoing supplier relationships that ripple through local economies for years.
The Immeasurable Dimension
And yet the most important dimension of Publix’s presence in Florida cannot be reduced to a jobs figure or a tax revenue number. It lives in the specific texture of what it means to grow up somewhere that has always had a Publix — the smell of the bakery, the reliability of the pharmacy, the familiarity of the associates who have worked the same store for twenty years, the comfort of knowing that when a hurricane is coming and you need to feed your family through it, your store will be staffed and stocked by the same people who sold you Thanksgiving dinner last November.
That is not a competitive moat built from logistics superiority or pricing strategy. It is a relationship — one that George Jenkins understood when he wrote “Where Shopping Is a Pleasure” across the first Publix sign in Winter Haven in 1930, and one that 260,000 associates across eight states continue to earn every single day.
About Publix Super Markets
Publix Super Markets, Inc. is headquartered at 3300 Publix Corporate Pkwy, Lakeland, Florida 33811 — the same city where it has anchored its operations since 1951. Founded by George W. Jenkins on September 6, 1930, Publix is the largest employee-owned company in the United States, with all common stock held exclusively by current associates and board members through designated offering periods. The company operates 1,432 stores across Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky, and generated $62.7 billion in retail sales in fiscal year 2025. Publix employs over 260,000 people and has appeared on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year since the list was established in 1998. For media inquiries and newsroom access, visit corporate.publix.com/newsroom.
Media and Press Inquiries
Publix Super Markets Corporate Communications Hannah Herring, Media Relations Manager 3300 Publix Corporate Pkwy, Lakeland, Florida 33811 corporate.publix.com/newsroom publixcharities.org
This press release was independently researched and written using publicly verified sources including official Publix Super Markets corporate newsroom releases, Publix Charities official announcements, the Publix CSR report at csr.publix.com, the Publix Investor Relations site at publixstockholder.com, Jax Daily Record, Supermarket News, Grocery Dive, Miami New Times, Orlando Business Journal, Business Observer, and current Florida regional news reporting. All financial figures are sourced from Publix’s official fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results. This release is not sponsored, authorized, or affiliated with Publix Super Markets, Inc.
