2021 Executive of the Year Winner: Enid Barillas

2021 Women of Excellence, Executive of the Year: Enid Barillas, CEO, Agustin MoralesEnid Barillas is a second-generation business owner. When she joined the family business in 2005 as the CEO/COO of Agustin Morales Inc., she dove into the dynamics of the supermarket industry, identifying new technologies and developing trends that might impact it, just as she had as a project manager for large pipeline projects while at BP, and as a technical senior manager at Bell Laboratories.Barillas graduated from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez with a degree in mechanical engineering (she also holds an MBA from the University of Miami Herbert Business School). Now, she’s at the helm of Agustin Morales, where she’s led a complete reinvention of the culture and mission of its supermarket (which is part of a growing supermarket chain of independent grocers) through education and integration of analytics to understand demand. The company currently has three supermarkets under its umbrella — all part of the Supermercados Econo chain in Puerto Rico — and Barillas leads all efforts for Econo Isabela, Econo San Sebastian and Econo Gate 5, Aguadilla.Since opening the stores, Barillas set out to disrupt the business model of the food retail industry in Puerto Rico. “We will challenge the status quo,” she said at the time. “We will make our grocery stores nutrition-centric — and our customers will reward us with their loyalty.”Barillas’ strategy was to differentiate its business through service, education and value, rather than pricing. “I needed to transform the business my parents built for more than 30 years, convince my peers to adopt the same strategy, and educate consumers about nutrition without losing revenue,” she says. “I encountered a lot of opposition internally within the company, and I had to sell the vision to our employees, most of whom believed the pricing war was the only way to succeed.” Barillas hired a licensed nutritionist to provide nutrition and wellness guidance to customers free of charge, marking the first supermarkets in Puerto Rico with a retail dietitian. Beyond the in-store programs that included cooking demonstrations, sampling and wellness festivals, the company’s “Healthy Path Market” (HPM) initiative was also gaining traction. It included mandatory training for all employees on basic nutrition and available certifications, which turned employees into advocates for good nutrition and ambassadors for the new products entering store shelves.Growing the business while transforming the culture brought about many challenges, Barillas says, including learning to balance its branding to appeal to the high-end customer seeking specialty items as well as to the core customer seeking nutritional choices at competitive prices. “Our businesses serve a wide variety of segments: low-income families with limited budgets, people with specific dietary needs seeking products and nutrition education, high-end customers looking for products flown in from Europe and the mainland, and professionals looking for local innovations and food-service solutions,” she says. “Our daily challenge is to meet all those demands.”Sales have continued to grow even through a crippling post-hurricane economy and the COVID-19 pandemic. Barillas says her vision for the future includes the growth and impact of HPM, which received its second national award in 2020. “The market keeps evolving and I have managed to create a competitive differentiation between our three stores and the rest of the grocery stores,” she says. “We’re showing people how to enjoy food with nutritional best practices in mind.”Barillas continues to be an innovator in the grocery space, directing several initiatives based on best practices within and outside the industry, including zero food waste, 100% paperless processes, ugly-produce marketing, and greater support and mentoring of local farmers.

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