A local market serving the Rocky Hill community since 1990
Grocery Life June 30, 2014
Grocery Life June 30, 2014
By Tom Butler
Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone had a great weekend. In the last blog I told a story about my bus driver growing up. It turns out Burl might have been the most famous man in Rocky Hill. I have had a tremendous amount of responses from you telling your stories about Burl and his bus. Who would have thought he would have impacted so many lives? Thanks for sharing your stories with me.
We are just about to the halfway point of the year which means the end of the second quarter for the grocery store. At the end of every quarter we generate a profit and loss statement for the store. This is how we determine if we made or lost money over the previous three months. One of the biggest factors in determining this is the amount of inventory we have on hand at the end of each quarter.
We have about twenty-seven thousand different products in the store and each product has to be counted as well as the quantity we have of each product. We hire a company to count all of the items in the shelves out in the store, but we count everything else. This means everything in the meat, produce, and deli/bakery departments as well as everything in our storage areas in the back of the store. We started this task last Wednesday and we finished it up early yesterday morning. It is a lot of work for everyone but I feel like it is the most accurate way to get a true count.
Once everything is counted, these numbers are given to our bookkeeper, Mr. Johnson. He then plugs them into a spreadsheet along with all our sales and expenses for the last three months and a profit and loss statement is generated as well as a balance sheet. It will take him about three days. If I had to do it, it would probably be Christmas before it was completed.
Mr. Johnson has been keeping books for my family since the early sixties. He kept books for my grandfather in his business. He kept books for my father and uncle in their businesses and now he keeps books for my business. That’s over 50 years of keeping books for my family. He probably knows more history about my family than everyone in my family knows. I enjoy hearing stories from him about how my grandfather ran his business; he must have been quite the character. I was young when he died so most of what I know about him and his business I have learned from Mr. Johnson. I am grateful for all Mr. Johnson has done for my family the last three generations. They never had to worry about their “books” being right and I don’t either.
Today is the start of Fourth of July week. We like this week at the store. It will probably be the highpoint of business this summer. We are finally selling fried chicken in the store this week. We started last Friday. Until we get everyone trained up on it, we will probably only fry in the afternoon during the week and all day on holidays and weekends. Ashley also added smoked beef brisket to his menu of smoked meats. It has sold out every time he has done it and he is smoking ribs around the clock, they have become so popular. Feel free to call us if you would like to place an order for any of these items.
We are finally getting a good variety of homegrown produce in and that should only get better as we get into July, especially with the rain we have gotten recently. Our peach man is supposed to start bringing South Carolina peaches tomorrow. I will believe it when I see it. He told us the same thing last week.
The folks in our deli/bakery department will have plenty of salads and desserts prepared to make your holiday easier. I asked Nancy what she was going to make special for this week this morning and she hasn’t decided yet so I guess we will all be surprised. Have a great day!
Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,
Tom Butler