• FORT LEE 

On July 16, the Defense Commissary Agency and the American Logistics Association (ALA) held a joint commissary council meeting looking at Fiscal 2025. 

The meeting included updates from DeCA, ALA President Steve Rossetti, and from committees.

View ALA Commissary Council Meeting Slides

DeCA UPDATE 

Making presentations at this meeting from DeCA were Director of Sales, Fresh Bonita Moffett; Director of Sales, Non-Fresh Robert Culbreth; and Chief of Promotions Todd Heasley. 

Among the topics that they spoke about were updates on the All-Fresh Team and Reserve Organization of America (ROA) rewrite; new item policy on notices to the trade (NTT) and nest steps and questions; the DP Push Program, including a DP 12 recap, nest steps, and the possibility of an NTT addressing this subject; an update on club packs; and a discussion of the Guam assortment, and whether it can be shared with industry. 

ALA Commissary Council Distribution Committee 

Co-Chairs Sean Thornton and Ronette Malone 

NEW ITEMS 

Council Focus: Industry to assist ensuring new items be made available with multiple Pos to the DCs to support the initiative.  

The possibility of an STS Report that can be used by both industry and DeCA/ 

• A July 7, 2025 Notice to the Trade seeking clarity on whether “P” coded items continue to follow DeCA’s 60-day DeCA Delete Policy.

Are all stores participating with this program or is it to be determined at store level? For example, Store A will order the new item when the location is available. 

What is the definition of a “commitment date,” and is this the same as the 45/15 availability date? 

How should situations be handled where one market requires more than 30 days to get inventory into the distributor, and how flexible is this 30 days?  

How will this date be communicated with industry? 

Does this cover New Innovation-type items that can take more than 30 days to procure into a distributor? 

How is the list of items available for stores to order being compiled and sent to stores, and how does DeCA get this information? 

Can this report be shared with industry, and is there any type of report that helps industry track success and the 30-day timeline?  

For stores that do not order, what is the proper channel to address these situations? 

For new items added in the past six months that have not been ordered and are not on the planogram, how can those be addressed if it is an authorized item that still hasn’t been ordered? 

Will K1/K1A stores be held accountable for all new K1 items? 

Many K1/K1A stores have K1 voids due to combined planograms/space issues; how do K1/K1A voids figure into the slow mover conversation? 

If a new item is initially approved as a K2 but later downgraded to a K3 because it does not fit on the K2 planograms — and stores have already placed orders — what is the expectation from industry/stores? 

Will the store status field be marked as active and orderable be better maintained within the system to ensure that only stores that should be carrying the item are marked as active and orderable? 

Distributors will not build an item until it is in power headquarters (PHQ).  How do we provide an accurate “commitment date” if we are not sure of when the item will be set up in PHQ? 

Concern: Deletes stop being pulled from the distributor and  start to be marked down written off sooner than the 60 days to “make” space for the new items.  This would create a larger spend affecting overall trade to DeCA. 

Who will ensure that all items have a distributor availability loaded into the system, and will they correct if they are input inaccurately? 

 

ALA Commissary Council Planograms/Rejects/Slow Movers Committee/Category Reviews 

Co-Chairs: Ronette Malone and Katie Boone-Wilson  

• Alternative to Syndigo policy for image loading for planograms and C2G?

No alternate solution in the foreseeable future — DeCA acutely aware of issue. 

• DeCA Slow Mover Project

DeCA currently has 3,595 K and H-coded items that meet the slow mover criteria of six units or less in sales per store per month. 

There are 1,955 items currently under review; 652 items put in buckets and awaiting vendor feedback; 478 items still to be sent to industry for feedback; 497 NIB shelf hanger items need review; and 13 H-coded items need review. 

DeCA leadership will review vendor responses and request additional information if needed to make final decision about items. 

Detailed business cases for item retention are desired from industry as opposed to general comments.  

DeCA’s long-term goal is to review 100 percent of categories annually, and this will replace manual slow-mover evaluations. 

• Reject Report

The reasons for PHS/DPO include DeCA delete, broker advised pre-delete, sold-out seasonal items, and LTMO. 

DeCA will provide industry/distributors with a list of fields they would like added to the reject report. 

• Club Pack Program

There are 497 club pack items selling less than $3,500 per year that have been identified for deletion.  

Industry feedback has been aligned on 75 percent of these items. 

ACP and SS and FW programs will be merged into one, with the end goal to K-code the best club pack items, cut them into the set, turn on minimums and maximums, and order via computer-assisted ordering (CAO).  

• Planograms 

For any updated planograms missing from commissaries.com, please note which category is missing and send to this committee or Andy Lassiter. 

ALA Commissary Council Digital Marketing-Ecommerce Committee 

Co-Chairs: Kris Plum and Christine Roussey  

• There are 64 families attending Young Military Life – Club Beyond

Ask is to provide $100 Commissary Gift Cards for each family to help with grocery assistance. 

How would the company donate?  

The first thought was for sponsor to place a manual order via DeCA Cards, a sponsor would be sent an invoice noting “sponsor for camp” to sponsor to pay via wire, then the team would get logos printed on card (no charge) and ship direct to the camp POC (no charge). Is this doable? 

What is the due date?   

Lone Hollow Ranch, Texas, gift cards: Wednesday, July 30;  Malibu Club gift cards: Wednesday, August 13 

How will the gift cards be distributed?   

Is there a welcome bag?  Is there an opportunity to provide DeCA’s “flyer” that educates these families on their benefit? 

There will be Welcome Bags at Lone Hollow Ranch, and Malibu Club will be handing things out upon departure (a welcome/thank you bag?) – either way, there should be no issues handing out a DeCA benefits flyer, but a copy is needed upfront to share with leadership. 

How far are the camps from installations? 

While the families are coming from Fort Hood and JB San Antonio, Texas, to a camp in Colorado, there are three commissary stores within 10 miles of the camp in Colorado according to the Commissary Store locator Fort Carson, Peterson SFB and the Air Force Academy. 

For those families coming from JB Lewis-McChord, Wash., going to a camp in Bain Bridge, Wash., there is one commissary within 10 miles — NB Bremerton — two within 25 miles — including Bangor ANGB — and six within 50 miles — including McChord AFB, Fort Lewis Main, Smokey Point and Whidbey Island. 

  

The addresses: Club Beyond,  Lone Hollow Ranch, 540 N Cascade Ave., #300, Colorado Springs, Colo. 80903 

Malibu Club, 6212 NE Old Mill Rd., Bainbridge Island, Wash. 98110. 

 

ALA Commissary Council Systems Committee
Co-Chairs: Kirk Kelley, Katie Wilson 

• STORE-LEVEL CAO DATA

Re-establish sharing of CAO store-level data with industry partners. 

Store CAO data: DODAAC/Item UPC/Case UPC/Store BOH/Store Shelf Max/Store Shelf Facings/Store Activation Date 

This will allow industry to support DeCA on out-of-stocks, phantom inventory and speed to shelf.  

• DeCA FILE MAINTENANCE DATA (PHQ and RELEX)

Can RELEX system provide a bulk-data UPC listing by planogram Plan Category Code? 

This would help DeCA and industry easily identify items assigned for category reviews and distribution. 

• PHQ AUTHORIZATION FILE — In addition to PHQ “ITEM ADDED DATE,” create an additional column, “REVISED ADD DATE.” 

For example, if an item is upgraded from an “O”-coded item to a “K”-coded planogram item, it would receive a “REVISED ADD DATE.”  

For example, if an item is upgraded from an “P”-coded item to a “K”-coded planogram item, it would receive a “REVISED ADD DATE.” 

This would make it easier to identify items newly added to the shelf planogram in category reviews. 

• Establish a master new item “Speed-To-Shelf” listed shared with industry and stores. 

This would establish putting everyone on the same goal of getting new item innovation to the shelf quickly.  

• Updates on EBS 2.0 progress.

 

ALA Commissary Council Store Ops/Resets Committee
Co Chairs: David Gretz and Andy Lassiter 

• Information:

OPERATIONAL ALERT #25-01 ORDERING NEW ITEMS (CONUS ONLY) – Replaces OA #19-02 

New items should be ordered as they appear on the new item listing, do not wait for a planogram to be published. New items should be ordered weekly by the stores.   

Cut the new items into the category section that is appropriate for the new item, next to other like items. This will increase speed to shelf which will result in positive sales increases. 

• Category Resets Process:

Upon category review being published, category leader responsible for scheduling/coordinating resets at store level.  

Timeframe for resets typically start 60 days after category review published.  

Resets should be completed within 30 days of planograms being published.  

Category leader responsible for updating reset schedule as resets completed. 

• 2025 Key Projects:

Store Promotion Execution – Late Add OTBs and best practices to obtain store commits. 

Best practice on Late Adds – Note to MPSG Team with three sentences containing details of items included and the package that the items will support, with manufacturer reps to provide to buyer and store ops. 

Will late adds be a part of the Push Program for DP SPOs? 

DP Package – Excess quantities of committed K-Coded inventory remaining after promotional period. 

Status of adding language to the current swell program NTT in paragraph two for stores to follow concerning excess inventory. 

• Ongoing Projects:

Explore Outpost expansion and off-post sales opportunities. 

Committee seeking meeting with Kim Soares to discuss industry opportunities to support. 

 

ALA Commissary Council Pricing/Promotions Committee 

Co Chairs: Andy Harb and Sean Thornton 

• Reminders regarding DeCA Pricing strategy

Ensure Family Pricing: Reach out regarding price discrepancies to merchandisers; industry requested to assist with monitoring. 

Develop key price points to increase patron savings: Category scorecards developed to assist merchandisers and industry with DeCA goals. 

Streamline the EDLP Process – WIP: Damien Gray to generate 1-2 pager on EDLP program process.  

• Promotions

Optimizing Industry Promotional Calendar (to include holidays) – 2026 pending release.  

Dates, slimming of seasonal Club Pack Program, Excessive EDLP submissions. 

AMS System Review (understanding the capabilities of DeCA’s promotions) – Pending 

Store Audits on dry club pack space by location – industry task 

How much club pack gondola space and how much club pack pallet drop space?