By Kurt Rentmeester
For The News-Chronicle
Opening the door into a neighborhood grocery store might seem like a step back in time. There were no fluorescent lights or piped-in music. But the butcher behind the counter knew you by your first name. Someone was always there to tote out your groceries.
In the city, that local grocer may have run a corner meat market. From a rural back road, the grocery store may have been the center of a crossroads universe - part of a farm cooperative or a local cheese factory.
Competition for the small independent grocer has come in waves. Glass-windowed supermarkets with automatic doors arrived in the 1960s and '70s. Mega-sized grocers and gas station mini marts multiplied in the 1980s and '90s. Now there's a new crop of low-price competitors, the Wal-Mart Supercenters or big box retailers such as Target with an expanding line of health and snack foods.
Kerscher's Foodland at 4436 Whitefish Bay Road north of Sturgeon Bay and Marchant's SuperValu at 9674 Highway 57 in Brussels are among a minority of family-run and independently operated grocery stores in Door County. They've kept their customers by expanding their niche markets for items such as Belgian pies. They've boosted business by increasing their line of convenience-type items.
When Jim and Carol Kerscher sold their store to their sons four years ago, six Mobil gas pumps were added to the store's parking lot, visible from state Highway 57. They reduced the selection but not type of food products they sell. Jim still considers it a full-service grocery store.
"We're more of a stop and shop, not a convenience store," Kerscher said of the store he opened 46 years ago as Kerscher's Superette. As of April 1, it becomes Welsing's Foodland when it goes under new ownership.
Even then, Jim Kerscher says he probably will be there every day, helping with the transition. Although he's been retired for six years, he admits he hasn't had a day off, yet.
Until very recently, Marchant's SuperValu had been known as Marchant's Red Owl, says Sue Marchant, who operates the 10,000-square-foot facility with her husband, Dave and their sons, Mike, Mark and Craig. Although they switched to SuperValu as distributor, the red owl emblem remained for a few years.
"We left our red owl on the roof a long time. When we changed the logo, people thought we sold the store," Sue said of the store they bought from Dave's parents in 1984.The location of this store on Highway 57 in the heart of Brussels is important, but not as important as their connection with local residents.
The Kerschers and Marchants are among the last of the small mom-and-pop grocery operations, a handful of small independent grocers left here. A look at the Sturgeon Bay's 1955 City Directory showed more than two-dozen small grocery stores, butcher shops, vegetable markets and stop-and-shops in town - almost all of them family-run.
By the end of the 1970s, stores with names such as Feeney's Quality Market at 624 Colorado St., Al's Clover Farm Groceries at 306 South Fifth Ave. and Nesbitt's Buy Low Grocery at 342 Louisiana St. had long since vanished.
Many employed butchers and offered a line of meat products. Marchant's SuperValu and Kerscher's Foodland still do.
"A store this size usually doesn't have fresh meat anymore," says Jason Fuller, co-manager at Kerscher's. Their small cooler has rib-eye steaks, chuck roast beef steaks and minute steaks shaped in square patties. They have a smokehouse behind their grocery store.
Marchant's specializes in Belgian trippe. They once made 2,000 pounds of the bratwurst made with cooked cabbage in one week for Belgian Days, Sue Marchant recalled. They also sell headcheese, the meat of the head of the pig mixed with spices; and sultz, a sweet and sour loaf of jellylike meat. You'll also find potato sausage, Cajun sausage and Italian sausage there.
They pick up hogs and cattle Mondays and slaughter them Tuesdays in their slaughterhouse behind the store. But there are fewer nearby farms to go to now - about six left heading north on County Highway C to Little Sturgeon and only a couple to the south of Brussels, she says.
Deer season once was the busiest time of the year when dozens of animals were processed at both stores. That's no longer the case.
Kerscher, who once processed 500 deer in a single season, says he stopped taking them in four years ago. The Marchants stopped processing deer two years ago after the outbreak of chronic wasting disease.
Although the Kerschers never did baking, the Marchants offer their own fried doughnuts, sweet rolls and a wide range of breads. They make their famous Belgian pies - in cherry, apple, prune, raisin and rice flavors.
The popularity of their products helped build the Marchants' catering business. They serve their brand of hot beef and roasted chicken at baby showers, graduations and almost any other event. They hosted a Palmer Johnson boat launch recently.
Some things don't change. Independent grocery store operators still put in long hours, for example.
Andy Jirovetz recalled when his parents, Anne and Andy Sr., ran the Neighborhood Grocery at 419 S. Ninth Ave. in Sturgeon Bay. As family grocers he recalls his parents put in hours that "were very, very long" at their store. It could be profitable.
"Being a family-run business, you were there at 7 a.m. and there till 9 p.m. at night," the junior Jirovetz said. "You really had to be careful. Profit margins were slim - as they are now." Business comes from wherever you can find it. Kerscher recalls putting in bids to supply the U.S. Coast Guard, local shipbuilders and freighters for the American Steamship Co., for example. But his longest days used to be during deer hunting season.
"I was always here from 7 in the morning to 9 at night, Kerscher recalled. "In deer season, I cut a lot of deer. The average day was 16 or 18 hours (long)."
Independent grocery stores also survive because they offer what customers want. Both Marchant's and Kerscher's have increased their line of pre-packaged and prepared foods and frozen foods. More ethnic food - Chinese, Italian, French cuisine - also is sold now. "Everybody works out. So they need quick fast food and yet they want their food prepared fast," Sue Marchant says.
In a high-volume business where profits can be razor-thin, even local operators have changed how they do some things. Marchant's SuperValu no longer mails printed circulars, for example.
Although the Marchants still provide advertising circulars to customers when they enter the store, they quit mailing them after noticing only a few of the coupons were being redeemed. Word of mouth is still the best communication tool, she says.
When his family ran a grocery store in Sturgeon Bay, Andy Jirovetz recalled many customers had charge accounts that were paid at the end of the month. Credit sometimes was extended, helping someone who was down on their luck, perhaps out of work.
"One thing that hasn't changed, you became friends with your customers," Jirovetz recalled. "It was a much closer relationship, almost like a large family. When some of your customers had tough sledding, you helped them 'til they got back on their feet."
Knowing who's paying your wage - service with a smile really makes a difference, perhaps most of all for small local grocery stores that flourish in spite of corporate retail competition.
"The price margins, yes, it's gotten worse," Sue Marchant said. "But cleanliness, friendliness and service mean a lot more to customers than price. I always tell the help 'Be friendly. That person is paying your wage.'"
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