Latest / Small Business Success with Fexingo: Local Companies, Main Street Stories, and Community Commerce / How a Local Grocery Store Beat the Big Chains with a Personalized Shopping Service
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, I was reading this week about a small grocery store in Ohio, and I think it's a perfect example of how a local business can actually use its size to beat the big guys. The store is called Fresh Fields Market, and it's been in the same family for over forty years. Luna: Fresh Fields — that sounds like a chain, honestly. Lucas: Right, the name is generic, but the store itself is anything but. They were losing customers to the Kroger and the Walmart that opened up on the edge of town. And they knew they couldn't compete on price or square footage. So they decided to compete on something else: service. Luna: That's the classic small business playbook, isn't it? Out-service the big guys. Lucas: Exactly. But here's the twist — they didn't just add a loyalty card or a smile at the register. They launched a full personal shopping service. Customers could call in their list, or fill it out on a simple web form, and a staff member — someone they actually knew, like Maria at the deli counter — would walk the store and pick out their items. They offered curbside pickup and even home delivery for a small fee. Luna: That sounds like a lot of work. How did they pull that off with a staff of maybe a dozen people? Lucas: That was the part I found fascinating. The owner, a guy named Vince, told me they started with just one van and a tablet. He took the orders himself the first few weeks to understand the workflow. Then they trained a couple of the best customer-facing staff to be the 'shoppers.' They didn't need fancy software — they used a shared spreadsheet and a group messaging app. Luna: Wait, a spreadsheet? That seems painfully manual. Lucas: It was, at first. But it was cheap and it worked. Vince said the key wasn't the tech — it was the personal touch. The shopper would remember that Mrs. Henderson likes her apples on the tart side, or that the Rodriguez family buys the extra-large eggs for their Sunday brunch. That kind of memory you just can't get from an app. Luna: That's a really good point. And it's exactly the kind of thing that gets lost when you order from a national delivery service. They might have the inventory, but they don't have the relationship. Lucas: Right. And that relationship is what turned the service into a lifeline. When the pandemic hit in 2020, and everyone was scared to go to the store, Fresh Fields' personal shopping service became essential. They were doing over a hundred orders a day at the peak. They had to hire three more shoppers and buy a second van. But they never raised their delivery fee. Luna: That's incredible. But let's be realistic — that was a unique moment. What's happened since? Did the service stick around? Lucas: It did, and that's the part that makes this a real business strategy, not just a pandemic reaction. As of this summer, they're still doing about forty orders a day, which is a solid revenue stream on top of their in-store sales. And it's become a differentiator. People know they can rely on it, and that keeps them coming back. Luna: Forty orders a day — that's significant for a small store. Do you know what that translates to in annual revenue? Lucas: Vince didn't give me exact numbers, but if the average order is around sixty-five dollars, which is typical for a full grocery order, you're looking at roughly two thousand six hundred dollars a day, or close to a million dollars a year in incremental sales. That's not just a side hustle — that's meaningful. Luna: Wow, a million bucks. That's the kind of number that gets a small business owner's attention. Lucas: It should. And we should say, this wasn't just about the money. It was about surviving. Before the service, they were seeing a slow decline, maybe five to ten percent a year. Now they've actually grown, and they've done it without cutting corners or sacrificing the values that made them a community staple in the first place. Luna: That's the kind of story that makes you want to root for the little guy. And it brings up something we talk about on this show a lot — the power of these local businesses to adapt. Which reminds me, if you're getting value out of these stories, and maybe it's given you an idea for your own business, we'd love it if you considered supporting the show by buying us a coffee. It's a small gesture, but it helps us keep these conversations going, and it keeps the podcast ad-free. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. We appreciate you thinking about it. Lucas: Yeah, it's a nice way to support the work we do, and every bit helps. But let's get back to Fresh Fields and what they did next. Because the service was just the starting point. They started using the data they collected from those orders to stock their shelves smarter. They noticed, for example, that customers in the delivery zone were ordering a lot of organic produce, so they expanded that section. They also started offering recipe kits based on the most common items in the weekly orders. Luna: So they turned the service into a market research tool. That's really smart. They're learning what people want because they're literally writing it down. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a feedback loop that the big chains can't replicate easily. A national chain can see what sells, but they don't know why. Fresh Fields knows that Mrs. Henderson buys the tart apples because she's making a pie for her grandson's birthday. That kind of insight is gold. Luna: So what's the catch? This can't be all sunshine and organic apples. What's the downside? Lucas: There are a few challenges. First, it's labor-intensive. You need staff who are good with people and detail-oriented — that's not always easy to find, especially in a tight job market. Second, it's hard to scale. You can't just add a hundred more orders a day without a significant investment in more people and vans. But for a small business, you don't want to scale too fast. You want to grow at a pace you can sustain. Luna: That's a good point. Sometimes the goal isn't to get huge, it's to get stable. Lucas: Right. And I think that's the takeaway for any small business owner listening. You don't have to out-Amazon Amazon. You just have to find the thing you can do better because you're local. For Fresh Fields, it was the personal shopping experience. For a hardware store, it might be the fix-it clinic. For a bookshop, it might be the book club. The key is to lean into what makes you different, not try to beat them at their own game. Luna: And they also created a sense of community. People talk about the service at the local diner. It's become a point of pride. Lucas: Yeah, and that word of mouth is priceless. It's advertising you can't buy. So, if you're a small business owner, ask yourself: what can you offer that a big chain can't? It might be personal attention, it might be speed, it might be specialized knowledge. Whatever it is, that's your competitive advantage. And you don't need a million-dollar budget to act on it. Fresh Fields did it with a spreadsheet and a van. Luna: That's a great place to leave it. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time on Small Business Success.