 10 May 2008 @ 11:58, by Richard Carlson
Great Buddha,
lap filling with these
flowers of snow.
---Kikaku
It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship sticks and stones.
---Henry David Thoreau
A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.
---Paul Dudley White, M.D.
The Snowville logo [link]
It's been a pretty interesting couple of days, as local Krogers patrons registered concern about a single product lots of people seem to like. Snowville Creamery's milk can cost twice as much as other brands, depending on sale situations, but people are devoted. For an old dude like me it's reminiscent of childhood days, not so much of glass bottles the milkman brought to our doorstep---and which we washed out and returned for refill each day. It's because of the cream on top, something I never thought I'd experience again! Mom preferred we shake up the bottles before the first pour, but sometimes I couldn't resist stealing all the cream onto a bowl of Wheaties. Yum! It really was Breakfast of Champions then!
So Thursday and Friday there was a flurry of activity as word got out that for some reason Kroger's had reduced Snowville's shelf area and hiked the price by a buck. As people all over Southeast Ohio called, emailed, and went into the Athens store to contact management, various stories began to emerge. What we learned, if we didn't know already, farm and pharm are hotly competitive...and what the grocer's got and the doctor prescribes are similarly fought over. Lots of people are involved and it's complicated.
For instance, it's not unusual in the aisles of Krogers or in the doctor's waiting room to observe a salesperson pitching away to a department supervisor or the receptionist through the little window. I'll never forget sitting in Dr. Rothstein's one afternoon, and watching this woman push the latest mood-altering capsule. She was inviting the whole crew out to dinner---"someplace special this time"---and then pointed to her clothes which, she said, were specially designed to match the gay colors of the pill. Can you imagine the money involved to deck out the Merck sales force in this wardrobe, plus dinners at the resort? Wonder who pays for all that.
The same goes at the supermarket, as sales people try to convince employees to change around the displays of their products. It's high pressure, and you can watch it out in the open, "free" market all you want to. Receptionists and Krogers folks, to their credit, look embarrassed and nervous while this stuff goes on. They don't want to make a mistake that their supervisors will get angry about, but they have a whole load of work to do---and it's hard to get rid of these corporate reps.
In Krogers this has been especially true since the store has been expanded and redesigned here. Now we need hiking boots for the spaciousness, and lots of patience as we trek around looking for where the products are from day to day. PLUS food prices are soaring at the same time! So maybe all of this motivated so many of us to get busy about Snowville. It appears it was over within a single day or 2...but quite possibly it was accomplished from inside Krogers as well as from our action.
From what I hear, and maybe I'd better keep the source anonymous, there are not only salespeople pressuring for shelf space changes. There also are Kroger regional supervisors in the Athens store a lot to oversee the remodeling. They need to make sure the fussy preferences of agribusiness are taken care of, including setups at the end of aisles and displays that will keep you trudging around the store buying lots more stuff than you came in there for. And of course there's the Kroger line of items...like Krogers milk. So the Krogers dairy guy gets a supervisor from out of town telling him he's never heard of Snowville. What's that! We got Krogers milk on sale, stick Snowville out of reach and raise the price.
So the dairy super has to do it, and then the regional manager leaves the store and goes back to the big city. What happens next, and this is just hearsay mind you, is the local Krogers then put everything back the way it was. Those of us who visited the store during the last couple days came back with different reports of what was going on, depending on what level of the process we happened to observe. When I went in Thursday afternoon, the milk was still hidden away on the top shelf next to Krogers on-sale brand and marked at $3.99 a half gallon. But when I scanned it, it came up $2.99. I mentioned the discrepancy to the clerk and he just smiled.
By yesterday afternoon, Snowville still was on the top shelf next to the sale but priced back to $2.99---and much more product had arrived which was featured prominently at the natural foods section where it used to be. So maybe if the regional guy comes back to check it out, he'll still find Snowville stashed high up and nowhere---and perhaps he won't notice the big display elsewhere in the store. Please remember I'm making this up and I'm not representing Kroger policy, but we are aware our local store manager is very interested in local produce and commerce. He knows Athens people strongly support local initiatives, and never more so than in the face of something like the big box just down the road. Seamans and The Farmacy know this too, and so these stores feature local stuff---because we'll go there to get it instead of to the box. These stores are doing everything they can to stay alive.
We should be grateful to all the people who got involved, even though maybe Krogers was handling the whole thing anyway. We certainly didn't do any harm...and it's helpful to remember this kind of thing is going on all the time with different products. Of course our local entrepreneurs don't have the clout of these big companies, so we should be proud of who cared about this situation. Bob Sheak even provided a model for a letter or email to Kroger headquarters. Susan Gwinn gave support, as did Jennifer Simon of the Chamber of Commerce. Mary Beth Lohse represented Sierra Club and Michelle Ajamian visited the store for AthensGrow. The Warmkes up at Blue Rock Station offered help, as did Kathy Jacobson at Broadwell Hill. And of course there was our anonymous correspondent from inside the store itself. And maybe many people we don't know about. So...it's 6:00 and I think a perfect time for a bowl of cereal---with cream off the top.
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