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grocer sees self with employees as 'player-coach'

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

He bags groceries, brings in carts, stocks shelves, and oh by the way, he owns the grocery store. Tom “T.J.” Norrenberns splits his time between the two IGA stores he owns in Millstadt and Red Bud.
T.J.’s brother, Don Norrenberns, nominated him to be recognized for his “Faith in the Marketplace.”

The Norrenberns family has “a heritage” in the supermarket business, T.J. said, with his grandfather’s butcher shop in Albers and his father working as a meat cutter, then in 1978, a grocer.

T.J. began college with the idea of becoming an architect, but decided the grocery business was the place God wanted him to be.

“I worked with my father for 18 years and then felt a calling to start my own business in 1995,” he said. When he decided to go out on his own, T.J. said he had to decide how to present the market to the community and to the employees.

“I’m not a boss or a manager,” he said. “I use the example of Jesus Christ and try to encourage and bring out the best in people. I look at myself as a player-coach.”

As a consequence of treating everybody on his team equally where all of the employees participate in profit-sharing bonuses, Norrenberns sees “hardly any turnover” in employees, and, he added, 95 percent of the employees have perfect or nearly perfect attendance at work.

One young employee, Nic Liefer, has been working at the Red Bud IGA for three years. “It’s the best job I ever had,” he said.

Leifer said he will have to leave his job next summer when he continues his college studies away from home, and wishes he didn’t have to leave.

Norrenberns said he “works hard to maintain a culture where employees feel at home, comfortable, trusted and part of the team.”

That kind of attitude makes him vulnerable, he said, because employees don’t punch a time clock. “I trust they will use the time wisely,” he said. While he trusts his team and encourages them to do their best, sometimes things don’t work out. On three occasions, Norrenberns said he had to speak to an employee who was stealing from the company.

“When a person fails, what do you do?” he asked. “Through prayer and understanding what God wanted me to do,” he formed a plan.

Instead of firing the person, he gave the employee a choice: take responsibility for the mistake, write a letter of apology to the other employees admitting the theft and asking for forgiveness and make restitution for whatever was taken.

In two of the three instances, employees decided to follow Norrenberns’ plan. The third person, who was terminated, decided not to follow the plan.

“That was their choice,” he said. “We give people the opportunity to make right what was wrong.”
When other employees received the letter, “the team always responded favorably,” he said. “Everybody wanted to give the person a second chance.”

Norrenberns said he was influenced by a neighbor, someone he had known since high school.

“There was something different about the guy and his family and the way they conducted themselves. I realized he had made a personal choice to live for Christ,” he said. “One day he asked me where I stood, and I didn’t know.”
Those days have changed, and Norrenberns knows exactly where he stands. “God can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things. God is allowing me to be a steward.”

His employees — his team in Millstadt and Red Bud — were at first intrigued by his management style, and then “pleasantly surprised.”

In addition to the grocery business, Norrenberns is actively engaged in his faith through his parish, Holy Childhood in Mascoutah.

He is one of the founding members of the Mascoutah Christian Men’s Ministry and has been instrumental in establishing an annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Mascoutah. Recently, at his urging, a men’s group has formed at Holy Childhood and meets monthly.

“The Holy Spirit can prompt anybody who listens,” he said, referring to his own awakening. “The light bulb went on and I asked myself if I wanted to do things the way God was directing me or the way business suggests.”
For Norrenberns, God comes first, then his family and then his business.

His daughter, Jessica, 25, lives in Memphis, Tenn., and has followed her father’s example of putting God first. She works in campus outreach in Memphis.

His son, Craig, 19, will have the opportunity to work with his father and then decide, as T.J. did, whether the grocery business will also be his business.

Since his third daughter, Ava Marie, just arrived about two months ago, she will postpone making any career decisions for the present.

The Messenger congratulates T.J. Norrenberns for taking his faith into the marketplace.