2023 Top Independents Report

Schmitz's Economart

Spooner, Wis.

For more than eight decades, Schmitz’s Economart has been a fixture in the Wisconsin community of Spooner. Located about two hours by car northeast of Minneapolis, the grocery store continues to offer its shoppers a host of services including a UPS drop-off, motor vehicle renewals and a photo kiosk.

Having its proverbial finger on the pulse of the community, evolution has long been vital for the single-store grocer’s success. More recently, the store now owned by Ted Schmitz and his wife, Laura, has expanded its assortment of private brand products while also introducing curbside pickup for online orders and enhanced services at the store’s drive-thru.

“We’re located in a small town and really the only conventional grocery store in Spooner,” said Schmitz, now the third-generation owner of the grocer that carries his family name. “We compete against some of the national dollar store chains in the area and also a few convenience stores.”

In business for 86 years, Schmitz’s loyal customer base is multi-generational, which Schmitz said he is reminded of from time-to-time by his shoppers.

“I talk with people all the time who tell me they remember shopping at our previous location downtown when they were a kid,” he said. “We hear so many stories about our store from the past.”

While private brand products across retail are enjoying a period of growth as consumers navigate current-day high prices, Schmitz noted his store has long been a proponent of carrying private label items and recalls a time in the 1980s when the company’s then-grocery manager was heavy into private brands.

Today, Schmitz’s private label assortment consists mainly of the Our Family own brand from SpartanNash, a relationship that dates back to the early 1990s when the company was known as Nash Finch.

To highlight its private label assortment, Schmitz’s holds a weekly promotion that offers customers a select free private label item when they make a minimum $20 purchase.

“This has led a lot of people to try products sold under the Our Family brand and realize they are as good as the national brand,” Schmitz said. “We have developed a lot of (Our Family) customers that way and made them less afraid to buy products sold under the brand.”

Additionally, Schmitz’s twice a year hosts its Our Family truckload sales that shines a bright spotlight on its broad assortment of private brand products. This is highlighted by oversized displays in the front of the store that features a host of grocery items. The sales are held just prior to back-to-school season and once during the winter.

“We really push some great values to our customers and put some strong price-points out there on various items ranging from canned vegetables to soups and foods for the fall,” Schmitz said. “We also make sure to highlight the sales in our printed circular.”

But building a high level of trust with consumers about a private label assortment does come with challenges. Most notably, a bad experience with one product type can turn off a shopper to the entire line of products sold under that brand.

“There is something to that,” Schmitz said. “But we have found that if the (private label) product selection is one that customers become comfortable with, they will assume that other items in the line that they have yet to try are good.”

He recalled a story his father, Dave, told him about the private brand ketchup the store carried several years back. Originally formulated to mirror the taste of a popular national brand, that brand over the years tweaked its ketchup formulation several times. However, the private brand ketchup Schmitz’s carried did not change and consumers familiar with its taste continued to buy it rather than the high profile national brand product.

More recently, shoppers at Schmitz’s have mirrored many across the nation in turning to private label products in an effort to stretch their grocery dollars.

“We saw a shift to private label products during the height of the pandemic that was driven largely by the lack of availability of certain national brand products,” he said. “Today, with prices high, and many households looking for ways to control spending, private label products are once again the focus."

Mar-Val Food Stores

Lodi, Calif.

With a dozen locations spread across Northern and Central California, Mar-Val Food Stores has maintained a focus on its simple, straightforward mindset as it has served its shoppers since the early 1950s.

“Our motto has been and always will be that we’re big enough to serve you and small enough to appreciate you,” said Jeremy Dodson, company supervisor with Mar-Val. “We really live by that.”

With a roster of stores ranging in size from 6,000-8,000 square feet to upwards of more than 20,000 square feet, Mar-Val has a long history of meeting the needs of its shoppers. But doing so over the past couple of years as it faced the challenges presented by the pandemic and more recently inflationary pressures on its customers has tested the company and its experienced staff.

“There were definitely some rough days,” Dodson said. “We were buoyed by the quality of our managers who kept our stores together. They were vital in helping navigate the emotional torrent of people not knowing what was happening (the next day).”

While the Mar-Val team successfully navigated the challenges of the pandemic, the regional grocer has seen a continued shift of its customer’s shopping habits over the past year in the face of rising prices. As a result, more are turning to private brand products.

“The inclination to buy private brands has definitely seemed to go up in many of our stores,” he said. “That is where a lot of the value is for our customer.”

Offering its shoppers a choice between national brands and private brands has been a long-standing way of doing business for Mar-Val. Today, a large percentage of the company’s assortment of store brand products is sold under the Best Yet label.

As other retailers have worked to expand their assortments of store brand products, this has not been a necessity at Mar-Val. Why? Dodson attributes this to the grocer’s long-standing commitment to private brands.

“While demand from shoppers (for private brands) has risen, we have always been focused on the assortment and something that we’ve been ready for as the demand has gone up,” he said. “We have had quite a few programs in place to make sure we were making a big impact in private brands.”

For many years, Mar-Val has highlighted its selection of store brand products as part of its “Compare and Save” program. This long-standing initiative includes placing a tag on each private brand item in-store that outlines the savings customers will see should they purchase a given private brand product instead of the comparable national brand item. The grocer also shows confidence in its private label selection and the quality of products sold under the Best Yet brand by offering a “Double-Your-Money-Back” guarantee.

Additionally, Mar-Val also ensures that if there are, for example, three facings that showcase a particular item from a national brand, that the comparable private label product is also given three facings.

“We try to cover everything that we can get (in private brands),” he said. “And if we see one category is doing better than another, then we’ll give that category more facings and give it added focus in our ads.”

And as Mar-Val works to continually evolve its private brand assortment, Dodson said he is open to suggestions from shoppers.

“If there is a type of product we are not carrying under our private brands and it’s something we can get, we’ll get it,” he added.