(FORTUNE Magazine) – You'd think that 12 charcoal- and gas-fired barbecues in the backyard would give even the most enthusiastic amateur chef enough cooking surfaces to handle any demand. It's not enough for Roger Stangeland, 62, chief executive of Vons, one of the country's biggest supermarket chains (1990 sales: $5.3 billion). He's the type of boss who likes to invite 20 employees over at a time and fix something tasty. So Stangeland's next kitchen in a new home he's building near Santa Barbara, California, will be 2,000 square feet and have such appliances as a French rotisserie oven that can roast two lambs or 25 chickens; a restaurant-size stove with six burners, griddle, and broiler; a gas barbecue; and three work islands. There will also be what Stangeland calls a ''miniaturized'' version of the kitchen by the pool. Stangeland's wife, Lilah, may not welcome this culinary excess. ''She complains that I make all the mess and she does all the cleanup,'' he says. The Vons boss learned about food as a child helping out in his family's grocery store in Wauconda, a Chicago suburb. ''I boned out hamburger meat from the time I was old enough to hold a knife,'' he says. Boning skills came in useful in 1986, when Stangeland was executive VP of Household Merchandising, a diversified retailer. He and other investors bought the company in a $750 million LBO and proceeded to cut it up, selling everything except Vons and its 177 stores. Since then the suburban Los Angeles outfit has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. It now has 319 stores, and sales have averaged a 66% annual increase.