The Days of the Traditional Grocery Store Are Over

When Meijer presented their challenges there was no mention of the Spartan Stores such as Family Fare, and no mention of D&W as getting in the way of their progress. This is a little sad for me, because I worked at one of the newer Family Fare stores in Holland for 6 ½ years. I noticed a lot of changes to Family Fare while I was there. It was sold out to Spartan Stores, and expected to grow significantly. However, that didn’t really happen. In many ways the store slowed down, and employees hours were cut. This resulted in many long-term employees becoming frustrated with their job and leaving.

In Holland, our Wal-Mart was converted into a supercenter, Meijer added another store on the north side of town and expanded their older store, and Target built a new and bigger store. However, D&W upgraded to a newer store several years back, and today is struggling to keep customers in that big store. There was a new Family Fare built in the Zeeland area not long ago that was expected to really get a lot of business, but now the employees sit around waiting for customers. In Holland there are 3 stores, and none of them get the business that they used to. The store that I worked at on Washington Ave. is the newest and biggest of them all, but still doesn’t get many customers compared to a few years ago. The other two Family Fares do very poorly from what I understand. They have remodeled one of the stores, and now have added Family Fare gas stations next to some of them. They expect this to help business, but we’ll see.

I think that the problem is people don’t want to pay the higher prices of Family Fare or D&W, when they can go to Target, Meijer, or Wal-Mart and make one trip to get everything they need and save money in the process. I don’t really know how traditional grocery stores can get themselves out of this mess, because I can’t imagine that things will get better for them. They’re too small to be competitive on price like Wal-Mart is. The only advantage that some of them have is their location. For example, the store that I worked at is the only big store in the area. People come from Saugatuck/Douglas, Hamilton area, and the south side of Holland to this store because it is close for them.

Family Fare and D&W of course are very focused on customer service now. Possibly their new idea of the gas stations next to the stores will be a success for them. I really hope that it is because I was part of this company for such a long time.