Losing a community friend

Saturday morning, I scanned my newspaper’s front page. That’s when I saw that the rumor was true. Kroger, which has been a part of the Bluefield, Va., community for over 80 years, was closing. How could this happen? I thought.

Barney Kroger started with one store on East Pearl Street in Cincinnati in 1883. The next year he bought more stores and then went on to become a leader in food distribution.

The Kroger Company is credited with several firsts: the first to have a bakery in a grocery, to sell meat and groceries under the same roof and to provide self service. Management’s innovative ideas have made it one of the largest food retailing businesses in the country. Today, 39 of Kroger’s 52 major markets with at least nine stores are ranked first or second among Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

This major corporation has been a good neighbor in the Bluefield community. Over the years it’s given back to the people by buying ads in school annuals and football programs. The company awards scholarships and supports programs for women and minorities.

Recently, Kroger donated 42 million dollars of foodstuff to Second Harvest Food Bank, the largest hunger relief program in the United States. Some of that food found its way to Bluefield. At the edge of the Bluefield store’s parking lot are recycling containers, another community project. How can this store close its doors in a place where it’s been a cornerstone since the town’s beginnings?

Kroger was where I bought food for the first dinners I ever made, where I bought my first set of dishes, bright yellow ones. They were a bargain — every dollar I spent on groceries counted towards the purchase of a dish or bowl or cup.

All of Kroger’s marketing tactics made me feel as if I were getting something of quality for nothing. For years I saved Top Value stamps which checkout clerks gave me in return for buying groceries. I saved and savored each stamp. I’ve even retrieved loose ones stuck to a Kleenex in the bottom of my purse, licked them and pasted them into books that I redeemed for glassware to match my dishes. The latest strategy, a grocery discount card, has a prominent place on a key chain with my car and house keys.

Changing grocery stores is as unnerving as changing hair stylists. Once you start having your hair colored, you don’t trust anyone else to mix the chemicals. Hairdressers can change your appointment, make you wait an hour, or raise their prices steeply, but you won’t complain. Grocery store/customer relationships are much the same.

I could shop at Kroger blindfolded. When I send my husband to the store, I list everything I need in the order he will find it as he walks up and down the aisles. Some of the Kroger brand products have found their way into my family’s DNA, making the foods impossible to live without: French onion and ranch dip, cake icing, 2 percent cottage cheese, CowPal cheese sticks and Spotlight coffee.

Also, Kroger has been there for the important times in my life: the store provided me with food for the babies, flowers for a sick friend, balloons for a birthday party, cakes for my daughter’s wedding, chicken soup to cure a cold, turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas, eggs for Easter, and gummy bears to give out at Halloween. When buying a meat tray to send to the home of a bereaved friend, the deli worker calls me by name and knows what I want on the tray.

The Bluefield Kroger also provides a community bulletin board where people post ads to sell their houses, cars or boats. Others leave messages saying they will make slipcovers, teach piano lessons, sit with the elderly or save your soul at revival. With the store’s long history entwined with that of the town and the people, why can’t this major American business compete with other local grocery stores?

Kroger’s food purchasing power should be equal to or better than Wal-Mart’s, which has a store about a mile away and is given as one reason for Kroger’s retreat. I say Kroger has a reputation and a management that can compete with Wal-Mart. A large number of customers don’t appreciate the mega-store’s organization of goods, where bread and light bulbs are so far apart that they might as well be in different galaxies.

Sometimes it takes light years to go to Wal-Mart for bread, shampoo, a birthday card and yogurt, then checkout, and find your car. "It’s too big," a lot of people say. That’s where Kroger had a niche. Evidently, it wasn’t deep enough.

With Kroger leaving in early October, I think I will dwell on the negatives to prepare myself for the void its closing will bring. I’ll think of the aisles stacked with dog food bags, Coke and Pepsi products, bananas and chips. I’ll think of the times I had to back my cart to the end of an aisle because there wasn’t room for two carts to pass. I’ll think of the times I almost knocked one of those stacks over as I steered the cart from one aisle to the next. As Kroger closes its doors for the last time in October, I’ll be thinking of aisle rage.