Grocery Life April 25, 2014

Grocery Life

April 25, 2014

By Tom Butler

Good morning from Butler and Bailey Market! It looks like we are finally getting past winter although I think next week is going to be on the cool side.

Here at the store, Easter kind of marks the beginning of our “selling season.” Spring breaks are over with, the days are getting longer, the tax man has been put to rest for another year and Grainger County tomatoes are back in season.

The winter months are when we do our planning for the coming “selling season.” This winter I decided that we needed to upgrade our cooking facility. Prepared foods are the fastest growing segment in our industry and if we were going to keep up, changes needed to be made. What seems like a billion dollars later, we have some fancy new equipment and have still not completed the project. We have three new ovens, two new smokers, a pressure fryer, one outdoor grill, and a big exhaust hood that I think could suck the air out of Rocky Hill if we opened all our doors. This new equipment sure is nice. I hope it can give us forty years of service, which was the age of our old oven.

Ashley, our meat manager, is already running the smoker day and night. He is smoking salmon, chicken, pork, beef, and bologna. He even smoked a fresh ham for one of our customer’s Easter lunch. It has all been very popular, so give it a try if you haven’t already. Today, we are going to test some more fried chicken recipes. Hopefully, we will be offering fried chicken soon. Meanwhile, the employees get a lot of free lunches because they are the official taste testers. I will keep you updated on our progress.

This Saturday, Rocky Hill Hardware is having their annual customer appreciation day. They are going to have some great deals on plants and hardware items as well as free hotdogs and drinks. Ernie and Susanne, the owners, have been great neighbors to have in the shopping center for the last fourteen years. I wish them great success on their big day tomorrow. I hope you all can come out this weekend and support them. And don’t forget to walk next door and buy a lot of groceries while you are here. Have a great weekend!

Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,

Tom Butler