The Wolf Is At The Door For Local Independent Grocers
October 7th, 2006
Sauerkraut.
It seems like such a trivial thing.
Sauerkraut.
My eyes search the grocery shelf frantically. There is a big empty void where the jars of sauerkraut are supposed to be.
I’ve promised my daughter, Mouse, that for dinner tonight there will be Real Deal Official Reuben Sandwiches With Real Corned Beef and Aged Swiss and Thousand Island and Sauerkraut on Rye Bread. When Dad does Reubens - he does them right.
No way I can come home without that sauerkraut.
The empty shelf is telling me that now I’ve got to make a second trip. To another grocery store. Again.
I really don’t have time. I’m aggravated beyond words. This is the third time in two weeks I’ve been forced to drive to another store because my local independent is out of something I need. The time before it was jumbo hot dogs. Hot dogs! In the Summer! They’re actually truly out of jumbo hot dogs on a summer weekend. Prime BBQ and Grilling time. I’m amazed. The time before that it was Dr. Pepper. I swear. They had ran a sale and they were actually completely sold OUT of Dr. Pepper. Dr. Pepper! A major soft drink brand.
Now… I believe in and promote the local independent, and I understand that from time to time stores run out of things, but… this is a pattern with this particular store. It seems to me as a shopper that they are always out of something and that I’m constantly being forced to patronize another grocery store.
Which… aggravates me even more because I don’t want to shop at the other store. I’m a Schnucks person.
You see in my town, the Big Box Supercenters and Brown Sludge Corporate Food Chains haven’t yet invaded.
And in my town there are really two major local independent grocery stores, Schnucks stores - which are typically a little cheaper and carry a little more variety - and Dierbergs stores - which are typically a little higher quality and consequently a little more expensive.
Now… most people who live in this town are either “Schnucks” peoples, or “Dierbergs” peoples.
I’m a “Schnucks” person. I don’t want to shop at Dierbergs. Schnucks is closer, I like their people (who tend to be a bit more friendly than Dierbergs) and I like their selection and prices.
But every time I have to make that second trip down the street - I keep asking myself if it’s worth it to have to make two stops. Every time I have to face an empty shelf at Schnucks - they are more or less “forcing” me to become a Dierbergs customer.
And… every time I shop at Dierbergs I like it a little more. So… lately I’ve been skipping the Schnucks thats closer to my house, and just driving to Dierbergs. Yes… I’m paying a little more. Pennies here and there really. Perhaps 2% or 3% higher on average. But it’s worth it to get what I need in one trip, and not to have to spend the extra time and hassle.
But… here’s the thing. And it’s really important.
While it’s true that right now the Big Box Monster and Brown Sludge Food Corporations haven’t showed up here yet, it won’t be true forever.
You can bet that even as I’m typing this, they are pacing like ravenous wolves just outside the city limits. They are pacing and plotting and trying to figure out how to tear the throats out of the family owned local independent grocers and eat them alive.
In city after city those wolves have had successful feeding frenzies and now all across the nation there are places that do not have any local independent grocery stores at all. Places with nothing but Brown Sludge Food Corporations. Places with nothing but Big Box Supercenters.
It’s too late for them and for those cities, but it’s not too late here.
There is still time to turn the wolves back from the door.
Schnucks and Dierbergs and the other independent grocery stores here have the infrastructure in place to repel this attack with plenty of stores in virtually every neighborhood in this city. They’re presence is everywhere. Which is good.
But… it’s going to take a lot MORE than just “presence” to beat back the hungry snarling Brown Sludge wolves.
It’s going to take LOYALTY. Customer LOYALTY.
The ugly truth is that the minute the regular flavored Big Box store that’s probably already managed to insinuate itself into your neighborhood (and destroyed the lives and lively hoods of 95% of the local business owners within miles of it) will eventually decide it wants to murder the local grocery too and convert to a “SuperCenter”.
Even uglier is the fact that the minute it does - every big-bellied hoosier* and his stringy haired wife are going to be waiting breathlessly outside of Big Box mart the day that Big Box Mart re-opens as a SuperCenter. The Bubbah family doesn’t care that they’re ruining their neighborhood and destroying their community. They only care that they’re saving 6 cents on a jar of hemorrhoid cream. Period.
But I don’t believe that the Bubbah Family is representative. I believe most customers are capable of a higher level of loyalty - given the opportunity to actually BE loyal.
And the time to start building that loyalty is NOW. This moment. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now. Before it’s too late. Before the wolves make it inside the fence any farther.
The owners of Schnucks and Dierbergs have got to understand that Big Box Mart and Brown Sludge Food Corp have systems and procedures in place that flawlessly monitor stock levels and customer buying cycles. On any given weekend they know EXACTLY how many Jumbo Hot Dogs or jars of sauerkraut or bottles of Dr. Pepper they need and will be able to sell. Their customers will NEVER face an empty shelf.
Another important place to build that loyalty is with charitable work in the neighborhood. I’m greatly encouraged by how much charitable and community work I see being done by the Schnucks and Dierbergs stores. This is something that Big Box Mart and Brown Sludge Food Corp absolutely REFUSE to do. And it’s something that the customers remember in big ways.
When customers can be assured of finding everything they need at the local independent grocer who supported them and their community - they won’t have any compelling reason not to stay loyal. Price won’t matter nearly as much as some would have you believe. Of course you’ll never convince the classless Bubbahs and hoosiers* that the 12 cents they saved on that package of “terlet paper” wasn’t worth the damage to done to their communities and local businesses, but virtually every educated, intelligent consumer will understand it - and continue to stay loyal to the place that they grew up shopping at, and that their parents before them shopped at.
It’s not too late. The time to start preparing is now.
* - apologies to folks from Indiana. In the place where I live, the word “hoosier” isn’t an endearing term for someone from Indiana like it is in most northern cities. Here in this part of the Midwest it’s a cultural slur that means someone who’s trashy and ignorant. Think… “Larry the Cable Guy”. But not quiet as classy.
Entry Filed under: General
9 Comments Add your own
1. The Sanity Inspector | October 7th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Fine, fine…but consider this:
We were leaving the grocery store recently — the Wal-Mart, and remind me to tell you bellyaching Wal-Mart-is-going-to-ruin-the-world upper-income types about the sweet old Mom-and-Pop grocer near my house when I was a kid, the ones who charged me five dollars for a gallon of milk because they knew we just had the one car and that my mother was at work, and that my baby brother needed milk, and how these are the people I think of when I hear about Wal-Mart driving small businesses into bankruptcy, which is why I always mutter “good” under my breath when I hear that, because Wal-Mart is like a tax cut for poor people, but all that is another story,
Plus, if you live in a large enough metropolitan area, there are plenty of small groceries–they buy their stuff wholesale from Sam’s Club, in fact.
2. Mac | October 7th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Well… like I said in the post :
I think that pretty much says it all.
I’m always amused at the apocryphal “I was ripped off by a mom and pop store!” stories. This one is especially amusing. $5.00 for a gallon of milk because they just knew that momma was at werk and mah baby brother needed milk.
As your idol and role model Larry the Cable Guy would say… “I don’t care who ya are, dat’s funny.”
3. Nick Kasoff | October 9th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Your downright insulting attitude toward those who are less educated and well groomed than you are is disgusting. I’ve never paid $5 for a gallon of milk, and I grew up in a small town with two truly independent grocery stores, and a food co-op. Fact is, Schnuck’s is not a local, independent store - it’s a growing chain whose owner happens to live in a four million dollar house in Clayton instead of a similar one in Bentonville. And you might be surprised to find out how few people who work for “good companies” like Schnuck’s and Target actually have health insurance.
The fact is that WalMart saves millions of dollars for millions of people every day. And with their $5 prescriptions, WalMart has done something that even the US government shrank from doing: extracted financial concessions from the greedy, evil drug companies.
4. Mac | October 9th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
True that…
But the point is that the Schnucks and Dierbergs families, growing chain or not are LOCAL INDEPENDENTS and not national mega corps.
And every penny I spend in THIER stores is a penny that goes into MY neighborhoods economy and enriches MY community.
Every penny you spend at Big Box Mart goes out of the community to a corporate HQ in some other state and most of it makes it way back into East Beijing sweatshops that help enrich governments that in no way have the United States best interest at heart.
It also impoverishes local businesses and helps to run them out of business and degrades the quaility and choices of the community.
Now… you can try to make the case that it’s okay to ruin your community and destroy the local independent businesses that are ran by your neighbors and other members of the community so you can save a few pennies, but what it all boils down to is GREED.
Your GREED.
Your greed to save a few pennies at that expense of your community.
Wrapping it around “saving poor people money” is absurd, and intellectually dishonest.
Frame it as you like - it’s still GREED.
5. s,moore | January 16th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Stores like Schnucks and Dierberg’s also use computerised inventory systems to moniterd their sales so that no excuse for them to be out of certain items.They need to ‘’tighten up'’ things to compete against Wally-Mart
6. Nick Kasoff | February 13th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
So some of my money goes to Bentonville instead of Clayton. I don’t really care. I don’t live in a mansion in Clayton, so the Schnuck’s owners are no more my neighbor than the Walmart owners.
As far as selling things from China … the only reason Schuck’s sells less of them is that most of our food is still grown in the United States. For this reason, the revenue derived from imports will be much lower at a Walmart Supercenter than at a regular Walmart store. But whether you buy it at Walmart or Schnuck’s, the TP, toothpaste, and turnips are all going to be made in USA, while the box fan and DVD player are going to be from China.
Sure, Schnuck’s is a “local independent” to you, today. But to all the “mom and pop” grocery stores that Schnuck’s put out of business, they are a regional conglomerate. According to their website, they have 43 stores in St. Louis city/county, 13 stores elsewhere in Missouri, 12 stores in metro east, 9 in outstate Illinois, 5 in Indiana, 5 in the Rockford, Illinois area, 13 in Tennessee & Mississippi, and one in Bettendorf, Iowa. I have little doubt that the independent grocers in the the many small towns into which Schnuck’s has moved did not view them as a nice, locally owned business, but rather, as a nasty chain store from “the big city.”
Furthermore, Schnuck’s has adopted the “big box” concept by adding additional lines of business in their grocery stores. Each time they open a store with a florist, a “mom and pop” flower shop is put out of business. Each time they open a store with a video department, another locally owned video store bites the dust. Each time they open a store with a pharmacy, another independent pharmacy closes its doors. None of these truly independent businesses view Schnuck’s as anything but a heartless corporate conglomerate out to destroy their business. So you can see why I can do little more than laugh when I hear you defend them like this.
7. Mac | February 14th, 2007 at 8:42 am
I think your post is typical of most Gordon Gekko “Greed is Good” wannabe’s.
Both Schnuck’s and Dierberg’s started life in our neighborhood as a Mom and Pop grocery store. If you had taken the time to educate yourself you’d know that.
Neither of them came into our communities as predators. Which is a far cry from what the Big Box Stores are doing.
Anyone who can’t see the difference hasn’t done their homework.
Your examples are pretty laughable really. It wasn’t Schnucks or Dierbergs that killed the Mom and Pop video and pharmacy. It was those other Brown Sludge Monsters BlockBuster and Walgreens. Any fool knows that. Well… most fools do. LOL.
Which is everything that’s wrong with the Republican party and Conservatism in general. The ideology has been hijacked by knee-jerk Gordon Gekko types that simply don’t care about the damage they are doing to society. They only care that big business is allowed to make as much money as they can at any expense. Even if that expense is turning America into a Third World Country.
Real deal conservatives realize this, and also realize that Big Box is ruining America - and want to stop it.
The Gordon Gekko morons don’t care. They just want their piece of the pie.
You’re comment pretty much drives this home.
As an aside that’s an interesting web-site you’ve put in your URL. LOL. I notice that it only has negative stories about blacks and hispanics. Just curious… are you a white supremacist? That site has a definite “skinhead” look to it.
8. Robert Henke | November 10th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
I work at one of the Dierbergs stores, and understand completely what you are saying. I work hard every day to help every customer to the best of my ability. I would like to say this really spoke to me and made my job all the more important to me. Thanks.
9. Mac | November 16th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Thanks for the kind words Mr. Henke.
I enjoy being a Dierbergs customer, I want to STAY being a Dierbergs customer.
I fear the moment when the Big Box and Brown Sludge chains will drive the local independent out of business, and I’ll have to shop with them because I don’t have any choice.
People need only look to the East to see what I mean.
There are a great MANY cities in the east where your choices are either a Big Box Super Center or a “Gigantic” (cough) food chain store.
The local versions of Schnucks and Dierbergs were effectively murdered there, and people have NO choice in the matter. If you want to buy groceries you HAVE to buy them from one of the two hideous choices.
I’d love to see Dierbergs and Schnucks get their act together to the point where they could beat back the onslaught that is surely coming.
Mac
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