IGA NAMES 2007 INTERNATIONAL RETAILERS OF THE YEAR

Woody Foster Receives Prestigious Global Award

CHICAGO, IL - IGA today announced Woody Foster of Foster’s Food Fair IGA, Grand Cayman, British West Indies, has been named one of eight 2007 IGA International Retailers of the Year. Foster was chosen for the annual award from the 4,000 IGA Retailers worldwide. The awards were presented during the IGA International Retailers of the Year Awards Dinner Ceremony, held during the IGA Global Summit on Tuesday, Feb. 27 at Marriott’s Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami, Fla.

A committee of food industry executives chose the winners from a pool of applicants submitted by IGA’s Licensed Distribution Centers. Criteria for judging included IGA Brand support, merchandising, leadership and innovation, Hometown Proud community involvement, employee development.

Woody Foster is the managing director of Foster’s Food Fair, Ltd., and its five Grand Cayman-based IGA supermarkets. Foster is a member of the board of directors for Foster Group Limited, an assembly of companies founded in the Cayman Islands by Foster’s father and uncle in 1963, which includes Car City, Progressive Distributors Ltd., Cico Avis Car Rental, H&R Auto Body, Caribbean Network Solutions, and Foster’s Food Fair.

“It is indeed an honor and a privilege to have received this prestigious award,” Foster said. “Six years ago my dad received the same award, and I remember how proud we as a family and company were to have been given such an honor. My dad was obsessed with customer service and never stopped pounding it into our heads that whatever the customer wanted, we must do our best to fulfill that request. We concentrate on that every day at Foster’s Food Fair, and I am thankful for all he did to prepare me for the position I hold.”

“In honoring Woody Foster as an IGA International Retailer of the Year we have one of those rare instances in which we have a second generation award winner,” IGA President, Chairman and CEO of IGA Global Dr. Thomas Haggai said. “Woody’s commitment to the IGA system and its customers is a testament to his late father David’s tutelage over the years. We at IGA are proud of Woody’s accomplishments, as I am sure would be his father.”

IGA is the world’s largest voluntary supermarket network with aggregate worldwide retail sales of more than $21 billion per year. The Alliance includes more than 4,000 Hometown Proud Supermarkets worldwide, supported by 36 distribution companies and more than 55 major manufacturers, vendors and suppliers encompassing everything from grocery to equipment items. IGA has operations in 44 of the United States and more than 40 countries, commonwealths and territories on all six inhabited continents.