ALA Renewal

Dear Valued Members:

I want to let you know how much we appreciate your membership and contributions to your Association this past year and hope that you will continue to see the value of banding together to preserve and protect this system that is so vital to our men and women in uniform and their families.

Your investment in your Association is returned many-fold as we worked on issues that matter this past year and will continue to advocate for this industry.  There is strength in numbers, and we are committed to doing for all companies what individual companies do not or cannot do for themselves.

I hope that you appreciate that we have your back when it comes to advancing your business. ALA represents commerce across the installations and around the globe.  Whether it is affecting and advocating for issues in Washington or advocating for issues such as logistics, export, appropriations, or regulatory policy, we have aggressively moved to ensure that your interests are protected.

ALA is now better positioned than ever to represent commerce across military installations whether it occurs in exchanges, commissaries or food service programs.

We fought the good fight this year on many fronts.  Sometimes we got base hits and sometimes we got home runs but we always went to bat for the membership.

We have worked hard to secure additional funding for the on-base commissary, exchange, MWR and food service programs and to stabilize and grow business with a massive return on investment in your dues.  We have worked with the Congress and the Administration to add millions of eligible patrons to the system.  We also have worked to tackle issues associated with the pandemic and the supply chain to ensure products flow to our millions of patrons.

Your investment in ALA paid dividends this year and I pledge that we will continue to work the issues that matter to the military grocery, retail, and food service channel in the 2024/2025 membership year.

We have moved with an aggressive slate of conferences to ensure that our voices are heard with policy makers and our various resale and foodservice partners.

Here’s a list of accomplishments and priorities for 2024 and 2025.

• Turning back harmful policies and proposed laws that would have had a devastating effect on the performance on on-base businesses and our member companies.
• Rolling up our sleeves and tackling issues that impede smooth business flow and ensuring speed to shelf.
• Increasing participation by the troops in their dining facilities and ensuring that they are not leaving billions of dollars on the table that they rightfully deserve.
• Assisting companies in engaging with decisionmakers on ensuring the right products are presented and promoted.
• Digging deep into rules, laws, and regulations to decipher and ensure industry compliance.
• Adding folks to the benefit roster in recent years…increasing the brick-and-mortar patron eligibility by nearly 10 million and on-line benefit north of 15 million.
• Intervening on trade and export policies that would have greatly inhibited to flow of products to overseas locations.
• Intervening with policymakers to ensure adequate transport capability to get products to the right place at the right time.
• Working with the exchange and commissary leaders to address critical supply chain issues.
• Working with category managers and buyers to ensure prompt reviews, introduction of new items, and pricing and promotions.
• Removing pressure on operating margins so that industry can better support programs with deals, discounts, and promotions.
• Working with the DoD and the Congress to increase usage of food service programs on base.
• Gaining additional appropriations for exchanges and commissaries and beyond with record DeCA funding and advocating for full support of our exchange, MWR and on-base programs.
• Gaining DeCA flexibility to move its various funding sources to optimally position funding to maximize patron benefits.
• Continuing to thwart actions that would have cost the resale system and industry nearly $5 billion from their bottom lines over the next 7 years.
• Ramping up communications with member companies to improve their business intelligence, planning, and situational awareness.
• Promoting commissary and exchange benefits with our media partners.
• Engagement of patron and resale employee groups in advocating for resale causes, especially coming up in the next Congress.
• Fighting privatization of these programs including Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force lodging.
• Improving transparency and communications between resale agencies and industry to tackle a long list of operational issues to include harmful BCG-driven trade practices, swell allowance, vendor stocking, just to name a few.
• Beating back proposals to cut DeCA $1 billion a year and wiping out the benefit.
• Working with DoD to integrate commissaries into the food insecurity problem.
• Hundreds of engagements with Congress and Administration policy makers.
• Eliminating the need for DeCA to have patrons and industry pay for their operations.
• Working regulatory issues with DoL, DoC, FDA, Agriculture, and the National Security Council.
• Killing proposals to privatize commissaries and exchanges.
• Working to persevere tax immunity and NAF status for exchanges.
• Advancing responsible food management transformation in DoD.
• Gaining funding to for exchanges and MWR program to cope with the pandemic and with the minimum wage hikes.
• Working to kill the provision that would end the sale of Chinese goods in the exchanges that would cost them north of $4 billion and effectively put the exchanges out of the brick-and-mortar main store retail business.
• Working to reduce interchange fees for credit cards used in exchanges.
• Removing border barriers to resale commerce and the resale supply chain.
• Working with Treasury to reduce fees for carrying exchange debt.
• Easing access to base for patrons, including language in the NDAA for easing veteran access to bases.

Our priorities:

• Aggressive advocacy and leveraging our industry’s strength. There indeed is strength in numbers and your membership bolsters the power of the Association in representing resale agencies and the businesses that support them. The military channel has unique advocacy needs and ALA targets those specific areas the inhibit commerce in the military channel.  As the military would say: “put lead on the target”—and that’s just what we do. Just this past year alone we worked to protect product availability from restrictions that were coming from the Administration and the Congress.  We helped turn back laws and regulations that would have removed hundreds of products from resale agency shelves. We worked to grease the skids on trade and supply chain flow. We fought for and helped gain increased funding for these programs.  Our councils and working groups broke down barriers and enhanced collaboration with resale operators.  We’ll continue to fight the good fight this coming year.
• Increasing share of wallet and share of stomach commerce on military bases.
• Increasing sales. Increased volume and patron participation is paramount – increased commerce lifts everyone’s boat by demonstrating patron desire for the benefit as they vote with their dollars. Increased volume spreads costs, powering the system’s ability to deliver wide savings margins for patrons compared to off-base commercial counterparts. That’s why we devote so much of the Association’s energy and resources to increasing the number of eligible patrons. We worked to add more than 20 million folks to the patronage roles over the past few years and we’ll continue to make sure that all deserving groups get access to these benefits. Every effort and initiative taken by the Association this year will be measured against its ability to increase patron participation in their resale benefits.
• Removing friction from the shopping experience. We’ll continue to work to remove friction points that inhibit patronage including speeding base or store access or unnecessary Federal or state restrictions to giving the patrons the product and services they want and need.
• Doubling down on ensuring that the Government understands industry’s challenges and needs. We’ll work to make sure policymakers at all levels understand the pressures on our businesses and work with them to have systems and procedures that enhance collaboration and partnership.
• Continuing to up our game on communication. We’ll keep you abreast of changes to the regulatory and legislative environment and let you know about issues and policies that affect your ability to market to the military channel. We’ll continue to provide timely military resale business intelligence, legislative updates, and weekly industry briefings And, we’ll be walking the halls of Congress and the Administration, heavily communicating with policymakers to ensure that your voice is heard.
• We’ll be coming forward with conferences that enable interaction with the resale leaders and decision-makers. And we’ll be making them worthwhile and relevant to your needs.

Your association enables you to get together with companies and people who share your interests and come together to do for all companies what they can’t do for themselves.

Just like you do every day in your own businesses, we’ll ferret out any unnecessary overhead and zero in on member value added services.  We did not increase dues last year and we are not going to increase dues this year. We will however continue to commit to increasing the value we provide to you and your business and constantly increase our efforts to maintain the viability of this great industry.

The association is grateful for your continued involvement and support. Because of your involvement, the military resale system continues to provide a significant quality of life benefit for the military and their families. You and your business colleagues continue to recognize that we all need to work harder than ever to protect the system and provide a healthy and viable business environment. In order to meet the challenge, we have invested in our advocacy campaign to educate key Federal decision-makers and lawmakers of the value of these benefits. We continue to engage patrons and beneficiary groups under the umbrella of The Coalition to Save Our Military Shopping Benefits, with outreach and access to nearly 2.5 million service members, veterans, retirees, survivors, and their families. Your support of these efforts is more important today than ever. Please continue your support by giving to the Patron Fund.

Please take this time to renew your ALA membership today. Login to review your invoice and make sure the information is correct.  If you would like to make an additional voluntary contribution beyond your dues, you may do so.

Please remember ALA is on a Fiscal year Basis, From July 1 – June 30^th. Having said that your membership expired on June 30^th. If you have already renewed your membership for 24/25, then please ignore this notice. On the other hand, if you have not, you have a 30-day grace period to July 31^st 2024 to renew.

Please keep in mind, ALA’s Annual Convention is slated for October 15-17, 2024, at the Cavalier Hotel in VA Beach and is for members only.

If you have any questions, please contact ALA Membership at (202) 466-2520 or membership@ala-national.org. You can complete changes to your roster and individual records when you log in to your ALA profile.

I’m so proud to represent this wonderful program and this marvelous industry.  My best wishes for a 2024 that is wonderful for you personally and professionally.