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GOURMET NEWS JULY 2016 www.gourmetnews.com Retailer News RETAILER NEWS 1 2 BRIEFS Serving Soldiers With the Wherewithal for a Meal BY LORRIE BAUMANN With their backgrounds in the U.S. Army, Oliver and Kathryn West continue to serve by making The Pot Rack in Leaven- worth, Kansas, a resource for young sol- diers and their families who are making homes away from home during training assignments that typically last for up to a year. "We start with the customer aged 30 to 32 or so, and they go on up to retire- ment age and beyond. A large percentage of them are asso- ciated with the military. At that age, they're here for a year for an upper-level s c h o o l i n g class," says Kathryn. "It's kind of a fun year for them because they get to get out without a whole lot of ob- ligations because they're only here for nine months. They've been married for a while, so they're upgrading the things they got married with. We have the op- portunity to showcase some nice quality products for them." The couple opened The Pot Rack in 2008 and packed their 1,100 square feet with pots, pans, bakeware, gadgets, coffee and tea. "We sell a lot of coffee and have since the day we opened," Kathryn says. "There's another shop in town that sells coffee but doesn't have the same variety. We sample coffee every day. Our cus- tomers know that if they're downtown, even if they don't want anything from The Pot Rack, but they want a cup of coffee, they come in.... We also sample tea every day as well, so there's always something on for everybody." "We have 28 different coffees to appeal to a wide range of tastes," adds Oliver. "We're close to a military base that rotates its main population every year. We get people from all over the place coming in all the time. They bring their tastes with them, and we try to accommodate them." While gadgets are the category that reaps the highest sales for The Pot Rack, the pantry of specialty food products comes in second place. In addition to the coffee and tea, sold mostly as tea bags, al- though loose tea is also in stock, The Pot Rack offers sauces, pickles, pasta sauces, candy, soups and spices. "We do a lot of soups, soup mixes. The best brand we carry is Frontier. For people who are con- cerned about sodium, they can use their own stock," Kathryn said. Spices come from Teeny Tiny Spice Company and Urban Accents. The couple have been married for 29 years, and both started their careers in the U.S. Army, Kathryn as a quartermaster of- ficer, and Oliver in tank battalions. Both military brats, they both attended Leaven- worth High School before they went off to college, Kathryn to Kansas State and Oliver to Oklahoma State University. Both were commissioned into the Army, but they only met while they were both as- signed to Fort Hood, which was Oliver's last duty station before he retired from the service. Kathryn separated from the mili- tary around the time that Oliver retired and in civilian life, became a business manager for a corporation that moved her to Kansas City, then to Atlanta and then to Leavenworth. Oliver followed along, pursuing his own second career as an ac- countant for 25 years until the two of them decided that Kathryn needed to change course again. "She took about a year off and thought about what she wanted to do and decided that a store was it. So we dove in," Oliver said. "We said one day that we were going to work together again and going to open a kitchen store. We didn't have any retail experience when we opened the doors. We thought we could figure it out," Kathryn added. The Wests credit GC Buy- ing Group members and staff for helping them learn the business. "We opened September 20 of 2008, and it was, like, the week after Lehman Broth- ers collapsed," Kathryn said. "I looked at Ollie and said, 'What are we going to do now?' And Ollie said, 'Well, we have all this stuff. Let's try and sell it.'" The Pot Rack is located in a historic building in downtown Leavenworth, a community of around 35,000 people in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Leav- enworth is Kansas' oldest city, and it's the location of several prisons as well as Fort Leavenworth, the home of the U.S. Army's Combined Arms Center, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, School of Advanced Military Studies, the Center for Army Leadership, the Combat Studies Institute, the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, the Center for Army Lessons Learned and the Mission Com- mand Center of Excellence. The town is big enough to support specialty shopping and benefits from a community that sup- ports independent local businesses, Kathryn said: "People do leave town to buy certain items, but the downtown is a center for gifts and specialty. There are about 25 quality specialty stores plus many nice independent restaurants." Those restaurants both encourage the community's interest in food and food preparation and bring downtown traffic to The Pot Rack's front door. "The restau- rants draw people in, not only at lunch, but for meetings and dinner," Oliver said. "People will come by on their way to din- ner.... If we get them downtown to eat, they'll shop too. And vice versa." The Pot Rack encourages that associa- tion between the kitchen store and local food culture by keeping menus from local restaurants in the store to share with tourists who ask for a referral and by col- laborating with the Leavenworth Farmers Market, which operates across the street from the store on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings from May to Oc- tober. The Pot Rack helps promote the farmers market by offering its literature in the store, talking to customers about the market, and decorating the store with fresh flowers purchased at the market. "We shop there, and we talk to our cus- tomers about what looks good over there that day," Oliver said. "Everybody wants to know when the first tomatoes are in," Kathryn added. In return, if one of the market vendors gets a question from a customer who loves the look of the eggplant but doesn't know what to with an eggplant, the customer is often referred to The Pot Rack for an a n s w e r . "Someone at the farmers market will tell them to 'Go over to The Pot Rack, and they'll say, 'Get you one of these,' and you'll be all set,'" Kathryn said. "And that's what happens." "Our two main employees, Becky Kel- logg and Tania-Liisa Smith, are accom- plished cooks," added Oliver, "One is a fabulous baker. They can tell people how to do anything – they've done it. They get a lot of people coming in and asking for advice." This summer, The Pot Rack itself is hoping to add another 2,500 square feet on two lots adjacent to the existing build- ing. "We'll be keeping the store open dur- ing construction," Kathryn said. Her plan for the new space is to spread out the in- ventory so things are easier to find and to expand the textiles line, add to the assort- ment of bridal gifts and perhaps add a few tabletop items to complement the bridal registry, which is a store service that's meaningful to the community. "We per- sonalize the process for them. We put up a display with their name and a picture of the couple... a little display of things that the couple has asked for," she said. "I think when you're in a small town, it's very important to do that." GN Meijer Specialty Pharmaceutical Services Receives National Accreditation Less than a year after acquiring Aureus Health Services, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based retailer Meijer has received accreditation from the Accreditation Commission for Healthcare (ACHC) for Specialty Pharmacy at Retail. Specialty pharmacy involves high-touch, high- cost and high-complexity medications for patients with complex chronic conditions. Aureus Health Services is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Meijer, acquired in 2015 to help care for patients with these unique pharmacy needs. Kroger Co. Recognized for Environmental Performance The Kroger Co. has earned a place in the 2016 Newsweek Green Rankings. Kroger's aggressive work in energy management has enabled them to reduce overall energy consumption in Kroger stores by 35 percent, and the company is moving toward the EPA's Zero Waste threshold of 90 percent, in all Kroger retail locations. The Newsweek Green Rankings assess the 500 largest publicly-traded companies in the United States and the 500 largest publicly-traded companies globally on overall environmental performance. Kroger Associates Ratify Union Agreement Associates working at 41 stores in the Kroger Company's Mid-Atlantic division have ratified a new labor agreement with Local 400 of the UFCW. The agreement covers 5,100 associates in Virginia from Bristol east to Appomattox and from Martinsville north to Harrisonburg, and three stores in Kingsport/Johnson City, Tennessee, and two stores in the Bluefield, West Virginia, area. Meijer Opens Wisconsin Supercenter in Sussex Meijer opened a new 192,000-square-foot supercenter in Sussex, Wisconsin on June 7, bringing local shoppers better access to low prices on high-quality merchandise, fresh produce delivered daily, and a full-service pharmacy that makes family health care a priority. The Sussex store is one of nine new Meijer supercenters to open – and part of an investment of more than $400 million in new and remodeled stores – this year, which will create 3,000 new jobs across the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based retailer's six-state foot print. The Sussex store, located off Highway K and 164, is the fifth Wisconsin Meijer store. Natural Grocers Opens First Missouri Store Natural Grocers launched its first Missouri store in St. Joseph on June 21, bringing 28 jobs to the community. Natural Grocers employs more than 3,000 people and operates 116 stores in 19 states. The St. Joseph store is located at 2414 North Belt Highway, Suite 100.

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