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This is gonna sound like a commercial, but it's not. These people have earned their praise, and I am suddenly inspired to talk them up here.
In this day and age, it's always good when a business goes about it the right way... In this part of the country, Publix Markets does exactly that. Their stores are big, roomy, clean and brightly lit. The carts are not left all over the parking lot. The shelves are well stocked. Pricing is competitive with other chains, and a sale is a sale (they don't jack up the price on something before they give you 2-for-1, like most other stores around here do). They don't re-label the meat when the expiration date arrives. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable and accommodating. They give jobs to disadvantaged, physically/mentally challenged and retired folks, and they promote from their own ranks (many of their store management folks have worked there for half their lives or more). Their store brand products are, across the board, as good if not better than the expensive national brands. There are lots of stores, and there's never one far away.
All that is enough to earn my business, but sometimes they go a step further. We have had occasion to ask a manager about a product that they were temporarily out of, and they have offered to get the product from another store and have a clerk drop it off at our house on his way home! After the hurricanes in '04, I stopped in at one of my local Publix's to get about $150 worth of canned food to donate to a local food drive, and the manager (who was bagging groceries) commented that it looked like I was "stocking up". When I told him where the food was going, he cut the price in half on the spot...
Just this morning, LOML and I were doing our weekly shopping, and we asked if a certain type of mashed potatoes we like had come in. The manager on duty went to the cooler and crawled around, apologized profusely that the Christmas feasting had run them out, and vowed to find some for us, which he did, at another Publix up the road. It was in our hands before we were done shopping. We were looking at produce, and a produce clerk said "I just got some fresh beans in this morning that are 2 days fresher than what you are looking at in the display. Let me go in the back and pack some up for you..." We noticed they had put some frozen turkeys on sale for clearance, and since we eat them year-round, we grabbed a couple for the freezer. The register had not been programmed with the sale price however, so they corrected the price on one turkey and gave us the other one for free (another company policy for pricing errors). Then on top of that, they honored a $10 off coupon from a competing store (another company policy).
The moral is that nowadays a business doesn't have to cut corners to be successful. They just have to leave their customers with no possible reason to go elsewhere. Publix does it right. They are so head-and-shoulders above anything else we have around here, that I absolutely hate to shop anywhere else, and I like that I can actually compliment, rather than complain.
Will now return control of your computer screen to you...
In this day and age, it's always good when a business goes about it the right way... In this part of the country, Publix Markets does exactly that. Their stores are big, roomy, clean and brightly lit. The carts are not left all over the parking lot. The shelves are well stocked. Pricing is competitive with other chains, and a sale is a sale (they don't jack up the price on something before they give you 2-for-1, like most other stores around here do). They don't re-label the meat when the expiration date arrives. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable and accommodating. They give jobs to disadvantaged, physically/mentally challenged and retired folks, and they promote from their own ranks (many of their store management folks have worked there for half their lives or more). Their store brand products are, across the board, as good if not better than the expensive national brands. There are lots of stores, and there's never one far away.
All that is enough to earn my business, but sometimes they go a step further. We have had occasion to ask a manager about a product that they were temporarily out of, and they have offered to get the product from another store and have a clerk drop it off at our house on his way home! After the hurricanes in '04, I stopped in at one of my local Publix's to get about $150 worth of canned food to donate to a local food drive, and the manager (who was bagging groceries) commented that it looked like I was "stocking up". When I told him where the food was going, he cut the price in half on the spot...
Just this morning, LOML and I were doing our weekly shopping, and we asked if a certain type of mashed potatoes we like had come in. The manager on duty went to the cooler and crawled around, apologized profusely that the Christmas feasting had run them out, and vowed to find some for us, which he did, at another Publix up the road. It was in our hands before we were done shopping. We were looking at produce, and a produce clerk said "I just got some fresh beans in this morning that are 2 days fresher than what you are looking at in the display. Let me go in the back and pack some up for you..." We noticed they had put some frozen turkeys on sale for clearance, and since we eat them year-round, we grabbed a couple for the freezer. The register had not been programmed with the sale price however, so they corrected the price on one turkey and gave us the other one for free (another company policy for pricing errors). Then on top of that, they honored a $10 off coupon from a competing store (another company policy).
The moral is that nowadays a business doesn't have to cut corners to be successful. They just have to leave their customers with no possible reason to go elsewhere. Publix does it right. They are so head-and-shoulders above anything else we have around here, that I absolutely hate to shop anywhere else, and I like that I can actually compliment, rather than complain.
Will now return control of your computer screen to you...
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