Kevin Murphy and the forty-year first job

Kevin Murphy wanted a car. In 1984, at fourteen, he took an after-school job bagging groceries at Publix in Margate, Florida. It was a sensible arrangement: a supermarket needed help, a teenager needed money, and neither party required a grand theory of leadership to get started. Four decades later, the teenager had become the company’s chief executive. The car fund had developed rather ambitious side effects.

He still enjoys the original premise. “I’m still saving for a car. It’s just a little bit different car now.” The joke is his, delivered in a 2025 interview. It gives a career otherwise told in promotions a welcome touch of mischief. A person can become responsible for a very large business and still remember the smaller thing he wanted when he walked through the door.

Murphy became CEO on January 1, 2024. By then, he had been a store manager, district manager, regional director, division vice president, senior vice president and president. There is plenty of upward movement in that list. The more revealing detail is how long he spent learning the work between titles.

Eight years with the keys

His first store-manager appointment arrived in 1995, eleven years after he joined. District management followed in 2003. Eight years running a store is a substantial middle chapter, particularly in a career usually compressed into the cheerful phrase “bagger to CEO.” The phrase gets the endpoints right. It rather shortchanges the years in which he actually had a store to run.

Those dates give his story its shape. Before responsibility spread across districts and regions, it stayed attached to a particular workplace. The interval matters because promotion can make a career look inevitable in retrospect. In real time, 1995 was simply the year Murphy became a store manager. The CEO appointment was still twenty-nine years away.

Recognition came along the way. He received Publix’s George W. Jenkins Award in 2000 and its President’s Award in 2007. Both preceded the corporate presidency by more than a decade. Whatever the eventual title, the organization had already singled out his work while his career was much closer to the daily business of stores.

Murphy’s own explanation of the appeal of store work is pleasingly tangible. He has described the satisfaction of arranging a merchandise display and standing back to see the result. There is a beginning, some effort, and something visibly better at the end. For an ambitious teenager, that can be a more persuasive introduction to business than a lecture about business.

An owner on either side of the conversation

The company that kept enlarging Murphy’s job is employee-owned. Eligible Publix associates can participate through employee stock ownership and stock purchase plans. That arrangement gives his career a second layer: he leads people who may hold an interest in the enterprise they help operate. A discussion about performance can also be a discussion about something they own.

“When you own something, you care about it differently.” Murphy’s explanation is brief enough to survive a busy shift. It also sets a demanding standard. Ownership has to become understandable to the person receiving a benefit statement. Otherwise, an important feature of employment remains an impressive phrase whose practical meaning arrives rather late.

“When you own something, you care about it differently.”

Kevin Murphy, 2025

In April 2026, Publix appeared on Fortune’s workplace list for the twenty-ninth consecutive year, at No. 50. The company also described its annual Associate Voice Survey as a formal way for employees to offer feedback. Alongside the ownership plans, that provides a concrete question to ask of the culture Murphy promotes: how do people participate, and what happens when they speak?

His own history gives the promise of internal advancement an unusually visible example. It does not make every employee’s future identical to his. It does mean that when the CEO discusses moving up from a store, the first chapter belongs to his own working life. That lends the conversation a specificity an imported success story would struggle to supply.

When he joined the board in April 2024, Todd Jones pointed to Murphy’s knowledge of running stores. That was a practical endorsement of the experience shareholders were adding to the boardroom. The person taking the seat had spent years seeing the company from positions where its decisions had to be made to work.

Ten days into the job, a new state

Murphy’s first month as CEO supplied a brisk change of scale. On January 10, 2024, Publix opened its first Kentucky store, in Louisville. The business had entered its eighth state. A leadership transition and a geographic expansion happened within ten days of each other, giving the new chief executive an early occasion to explain what the company intended to bring with it.

The Louisville location offered a fresh pizza kitchen, a scratch bakery, custom subs and an area where shoppers could sit with a drink or something to eat. It was a supermarket with several arguments for arriving hungry. Kentucky also brought bourbon selections at the adjacent liquor store, a detail that suggests a new market deserves some local consideration along with the familiar signs.

The store opening came with a donation of 40,000 pounds of produce to Louisville’s Dare to Care food bank. The partnership predated the supermarket: Publix had begun providing produce to the organization after announcing its Kentucky expansion in 2021. That timing matters. The company had a local relationship before it had local checkout lanes.

For Murphy, expansion poses a version of the problem that accompanied every step in his career. Responsibility gets bigger; the actual customer encounter remains small. Another state adds distance between the chief executive and the store floor. Each location still has to make the company’s service promise credible during an ordinary shopping trip.

The numbers get less sentimental

A long career is an engaging opening. A chief executive must also answer for a present-tense business. Publix reported fiscal 2025 sales of $62.7 billion, up 5% from $59.7 billion in 2024. Comparable-store sales rose 3.5%. Net earnings reached $4.7 billion. These are company results during Murphy’s tenure, produced by an organization far larger than its chief executive.

The following year brought a slower sales environment. In the second quarter of 2026, total sales rose 1% to $15.7 billion, while comparable-store sales declined 0.5%. Murphy’s accompanying comment acknowledged a difficult economic period. Growth in the overall business and softness in existing stores can appear in the same release. A fair account of his tenure has room for both.

Publix’s ownership also extends into real estate. During the period covered by a March 2026 account of its acquisitions, the company had spent at least $428 million buying properties it anchored. Owning those sites gives the business more control over the setting in which its stores operate. Murphy’s responsibilities now reach well beyond what goes on the shelf to the buildings surrounding it.

There is a similar distinction in its community work. In September 2026, Publix Super Markets Charities announced a $25 million donation supporting more than 350 food banks and other nonprofits. The commitment belonged to the charitable organization. Murphy spoke for the retailer’s emphasis on helping feed neighbors, while thousands of associates took part in volunteer activities. Keeping those roles clear makes the contribution easier to understand.

The next promotion is someone else’s

The relationships around Murphy have changed as he has advanced. Jones, his predecessor as CEO, became executive chairman in 2024. In May 2026, Jones announced his retirement from that executive role, while remaining board chairman. Murphy described him as an operator and mentor. The succession preserved a connection to someone whose experience helped prepare the next leader.

By October 2026, Murphy was announcing another group of successors. Technology promotions effective January 2027 included expanded responsibilities for Laurie Douglas and Erik Katenkamp. The appointments covered digital capabilities, development, data and AI. These subjects sit some distance from a teenager packing groceries, but they belong to the same business that teenager eventually came to lead.

One of the executives being promoted, Steve Brooks, had started as a stock clerk in 1983 before moving into information systems. His route illustrates how an internal career can cross departments as well as rise through them. Murphy’s own example concerns retail leadership. The organization around him contains other versions of the first job that keeps becoming something else.

That is where his story turns outward. Becoming CEO gave Murphy a title that makes an excellent ending to a short biography. It also made him responsible for a workplace where other people are deciding whether to stay, what to learn and which opportunity might come next. The teenage car fund is a good story. Making room for somebody else’s next chapter is the ongoing job.