Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507170019
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
And his yogurt. And his blue cheese, shredded mozzarella and ricotta. And his eggs and orange juices. He knows how many of them he has to have, how fresh they are, when to throw them away or donate them to the Salvation Army.
But Linkous, who has worked as the head dairy clerk for the Blacksburg Kroger store for the past 23 years, doesn't know how long Kroger has been a mainstay of the town's grocery scene. Neither do his co-workers Greg Poulan or Karen McCoy, who have worked at the supermarket for 16 and 29 years, respectively.
For that matter, neither does Bob Baker, who's managed the Kroger in University Mall since being transferred there from Galax in 1978.
For the record, Kroger has had at least four Blacksburg locations since 1949. It might be longer, but the company's real estate records from the precomputer age are a little hazy. It's been in University Mall since 1973 and has expanded twice, with the most recent expansion completed in January at an estimated cost of $1 million.
While the longtime employees may not know of their employer's beginnings, they've seen their share of changes and have their own ideas about why the store has prospered.
"First of all, I think we run a really good store," said McCoy, who has worked as head clerk of the drug and merchandise section for two decades. "If a customer wants something, we're going to do our darndest to get it, someway, somehow."
With a smile and an engaging predilection to laughter, McCoy, like her co-workers who have lived in the area much of their lives, knows many of her customers by name.
One woman comes in often and asks her what's new in the store to buy. "Today I sent her home with Breyer's ice cream and peach pie," she said with satisfaction.
The Kroger corporation made $242 million last year, according to its 1994 annual report. While the company refuses to reveal precise figures on an individual store's sales or revenues, it says the Blacksburg operation ranks in the top 10 percent of all its stores, which number about 1,300 across much of the Southeast.
The store is also a significant part of this college town's economy - employing 100 full-time workers and another 140 part-timers.
"The store is very successful, however you want to measure it," said Archie Fralin, a spokesman for the company in Roanoke.
Linkous was hired in 1966 as a bagger for $1.35 an hour. The store was located off Main Street in downtown Blacksburg, in the building now housing the Tech Bookstore. He has a more pragmatic view of his employer's success: "We just changed with the students" of Virginia Tech, he said.
The buying power of 25,000 students helps. But Linkous maintains that basic cordiality and friendliness go even further toward keeping customers.
"They like to be noticed," Linkous said. A friendly "Hi," or "How are you?" and some conversation about recent rains or the more recent heat wave - "They get that."
"Just offering the customers so many different items" is perhaps the store's biggest advantage, Poulan said. Customers like the variety they find in a store with a full video store, expanded deli, seafood and dairy sections, a restaurant and other added facilities and services.
Jean Brewer concurs. "I like the variety, the choices," said Brewer, who has shopped at Kroger since 1968. "That's how loyal I am." She also mentions the friendliness of the employees, many of whom she has gotten to know over the years.
"There's only one thing I don't like - the size," she said. At 65, she's tired after having to trek throughout the 54,000-square-foot store, which is nearly a quarter larger than it was last year. But you take the good with the bad - to have that many items, you need more space - and she keeps her shopping list short.
"Our business - it's a customer-driven business," Baker said. Part of the Blacksburg operation's success has to do with what it sells: an array of imported beers, ethnic foods and specialty cheeses, a 79-cent bottle of olives or the $4 variety. Many of those items customers can't find at other groceries, even other Kroger's, he said.
"Our store is merchandized for our customers," he said.
Baker is quick to praise his employees, too. "We have extremely good people here," he said.
It also helps, he and associate manager Ernest Howard said, that department heads are given leeway to make their own decisions. Like last year, when a produce clerk wanted to run a special on red and yellow bell peppers. Generally, the peppers - which are more expensive than their green counterparts - garner only a small two-foot swath of space on the produce shelf. With an expanded 20-foot-wide spread on the shelves, the store sold perhaps 100-120 cases of the vegetable in a week, - five times as many as it would normally sell.
It was just peppers, but, "If we don't try, we can't sell it," Baker said.
That kind of attitude will probably have to continue when a new Harris-Teeter opens across town in Gables Shopping Center later this year. Or when Wal-Mart opens its new superstore - complete with its own supermarket - next year in Christiansburg. Kroger's annual report cites "supercenters" as its "primary competitive threat."
Whenever other groceries have opened in Blacksburg or even Christiansburg, the Blacksburg Kroger has seen its business drop off. "But we got it back," Baker said. That'll be the case this time around, too, he predicted.
"The only thing that we have control of in Blacksburg is what goes on in these four walls," he said. "If we just take care of the customer, the competition can come.
"We have to do our very best that we can do."
by CNB