THE STATE OF THINGS, IN AN EGG SHELL

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market.  I hope everyone is having a good week.  Once again, the weather is too cold for my taste, and we had a “mini blizzard” Wednesday morning.  That made Tuesday a busy day at the store, but it has been kind of sluggish since then.  Hopefully the cold weather is about to come to an end.

The Tennessee Department of Agriculture paid us a visit this week.  That is always exciting.  They now do the job of the Knox County Health Department for grocery and convenience stores in Knox County.  They inspect us every six months to make sure we are following the established health standards of the state.  The store was always under the jurisdiction of Knox County until about two years ago and then the state took that away from them.  I asked the lady who does our inspection why the county doesn’t do it anymore and she told me it was because they don’t know what they are doing.  The odd thing about that is Knox County is still in charge of all the restaurants in town.  This fact piqued my curiosity so I called and talked to the head of the Knox County health department to ask for an explanation.  He told me he didn’t know why the state took grocery stores away from their jurisdiction and not restaurants.  I told him the state told me it was because they didn’t know how to do their job.  He just said I’m sure they did.  I’m not real smart but I sense some animosity between those two agencies.

Well, as it turns out, I don’t get along with the State Department of Agriculture.  It took about a minute and a half into her first visit, which lasted four hours, for me to figure this out and that was only because I was confused and disoriented the first minute she was here, or I would have known sooner.  I guess she’s just doing her job, but I’ve been doing my job, most likely longer than she has been alive so I have a hard time listening to her tell me how to run my business.  Maybe it’s because of my pride, but I am proud of what my staff and I have accomplished over the last thirty-five years in serving this community safely, and we take offense to someone suggesting we don’t care about public health standards.  Maybe it’s a philosophical difference – are we here to serve the government or are they here to serve us?  It seems like sometimes they work against you instead of with you.

The irony of all this, I’m not even sure what irony means, but anyways, the irony of all this  is the state was perfectly fine with me running my business during the COVID pandemic.  So, during the supposed worse health crisis of the last century, I guess it was perfectly healthy for my staff and I to show up for work every day and serve somewhere around a thousand customers a day.  I’m certainly glad they let us stay open, and I’m sure they were glad to have the sales tax revenue.  Oddly enough, we didn’t have health inspections for a year and a half during that time.  I guess they were worried about their health and stayed home?

Our relationship with the health official seems to be improving with each visit.  I guess she realizes after a couple of years of inspecting us, that we are always trying to improve our food safety systems.  Or, it could be because it is now my policy to never be in the building the same time she is.  Everything seems to go smoother when I’m not around.  I guess my absence has made her heart grow fonder…of the store.  All I know is my health is a lot better since I have quit dealing with her, which I guess is the goal?

Speaking of health, Barbara Tenney broke her arm this week.  For those of you who don’t know Barbara, she does the cooking classes here at the store.  I don’t yet know all the details of her injury, but we have to cancel the upcoming cooking classes until further notice.  Hopefully she will have a speedy recovery!

On a brighter note, grocery prices seem to be going down.  Every week, we make several hundred price changes.  For the last two or three years most of those price changes were increases and, as you know, they were pretty severe.  I think grocery prices suffered from inflation more than most every other industry.  Well just recently, more prices are decreasing than increasing in our weekly price changes.  That’s good news for everyone!  Hopefully that will continue.  Before you say it, this does not include egg prices.  I don’t know when they are going to stop going up.  The weird thing is, what was once our least expensive eggs are now more expensive than our expensive eggs are.  So now our organic free range fancy eggs are cheaper than just a regular white egg.  I guess fancy chickens don’t get the bird flu as bad as normal chickens.  We sell a local egg from Sequatchie Farms, which is what we eat at our house.  It might be a good time to support a local egg farmer since they are now as cheap or cheaper than national brands!

Hope everyone has a great weekend and thanks for letting us be a part of your community!

Tom Butler