Grocery Life November 15, 2017

By Tom Butler

Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week!
I just wanted to send out a quick reminder about our Holiday Open House coming up this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The football game is at night so you can come enjoy all the foods we are preparing, go home, take a nap, and be ready to go by game time.

Our meat department will be using our favorite recipes to prepare beef tenderloin, prime rib, ham and pork tenderloin. Our bakery department will have several desserts you can try.

Barbara Tenney, our cooking class instructor, will be here with some of her favorite holiday foods along with the recipes to prepare them and a couple of our wine vendors will be on hand to help you with wine pairings for your holiday meals.

We will also be sampling numerous St. Claire and Sysco side dishes including cornbread stuffing. All of these sides are fully prepared so all you have to do is heat them up which is a big time saver.

Some of our local vendors will be here as well. Those will include Vienna Coffee, Doug Carnathan with Carnathan Honey, Gringo Salsa, Blackberry Farm Brewery, Mayfield Dairy, Planet H20 water, Mamie’s Cheese Wafers, Better in Blue, and Fanatic Brewery. Those are the ones I can think of the top of my head but am sure I have left some out.

I think my whole family will be here to help out. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us and it also signals the time when my kids start asking me repeatedly, “when are we going to get a Christmas tree?” I hope you and your family will join us!
See you Saturday and thanks for letting us be a part of your community!

Tom Butler

Click here to view past blogs

Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881

Grocery Life November 10, 2017

By Tom Butler 

Good afternoon from Butler and Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week! I haven’t written in a while but need to get started back. With the holidays upon us, we have a lot going on that I need to let you know about.

Business has been good this fall, so far. It probably would be better if the football team would win more games than they lose. People don’t seem as excited about spending money when they lose, which reflects in our numbers. I have figured out the best way to combat this is to have a beef tenderloin sale. Some of you have probably noticed that around the third week of October every year our tenderloin goes on sale. I probably don’t need to tell you what game that corresponds with. I guess if we ever win that game that will be the end of the October tenderloin sale. I think you are safe for the foreseeable future?

The next big event for the store is our annual Holiday Open House. This will be Saturday the 18th of November from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm. For those of you that have never participated in this event, this is when our store turns into a giant buffet line. We will be sampling all kinds of holiday foods, as well as some of our most popular local products. This is easily the most popular thing we do at the store every year, so make sure you mark your calendar to be here. We can’t wait!

The big event after that is the annual Rocky Hill Christmas Parade. It is on Saturday December 2nd at 6:00 pm. Festivities start at 4:00 pm. 

The parade is put on by the Rocky Hill Business Association, and a lot of folks give a lot of their time planning this event. It is quite the undertaking.  Josh, from our store, has helped out on the parade committee this year and has told me there will be several new things at the parade to make the experience better for everyone. The parade just gets bigger and better every year. I hope to see you there.

Once again we are doing our food drive for Second Harvest. You all have been great supporters of this over the years, and it has started out strong again this holiday season. We typically send them well over a thousand pounds of food each time we do this. We have five and ten dollar food bags already prepared here at the store. So if you want to help Second Harvest, just grab a bag when you are doing your shopping, and we will take care of the rest.

One thing that will be different this year with the food bags is we now have to charge sales tax on them. We have never collected tax on them in the past since we thought it was a donation of food to charity but as usual, I was wrong. The reason I know this is because the Tennessee Department of Revenue told me so. You guessed it; the store got audited this year.

So when you get audited, the state picks three years of past business and pours over all of your sales, purchases, and any other crap they can think of to agitate you. Once you give them all of the records they asked for, they wait a few weeks and then call you back and ask for more crap just to agitate you some more. This goes on for a couple of months and then they come back with a bunch of questions that my ten year old son could answer. So I guess they only do it to agitate you again. Well after it was all said and done, the only question that remained was about the food bags that go to Second Harvest. So I explained to them that we make these bags, customers buy the bags and put them in a bin. When the bin fills up, Second Harvest comes and picks them up. I even gave them pictures of the bags, the filled bins, and the Second Harvest truck backed up to the store for pickup. Well they weren’t going for it, which further agitated me. In the end, they decided I needed to pay sales tax on all the bags we had sold over those three years. So after pouring over three years of my business records, and millions of dollars in transactions, the only thing the state could come up with is we didn’t collect sales tax on our charity food drive. I guess no good deed goes unpunished? 

Around this same time, a friend of mine was in the store and told me he was going to some statesmen dinner in Nashville. I jokingly told him if he saw the governor, tell him I am not happy about having to pay this tax bill. Well it wasn’t long before a got a phone call from some high ranking politician in Nashville. I told him my story and it seemed to agitate him. He told me he would make some calls and get back to me. The following week, I was driving my son up to Pennsylvania to skateboard camp, and we had stopped for gas. My phone rings and it is a Nashville number. Assuming it was him, I answered. Well, it was the director of the Tennessee Department of Revenue along with a couple of more officials conferenced in. I wasn’t really prepared for a conversation with them sitting in my truck at a gas station somewhere in Pennsylvania, but what do you do? I told them my story, and how I didn’t think it was right for them to tax the bags. After they gave me some long explanation that made no sense to me, they told me I was wrong. I then proposed that I send the tax amount they claimed I owed to them to Second Harvest instead. Wrong again.
   

Well, sometimes I get to the point when I have said my piece and I know it is time to take my ball and go home. That time had come, so I sent them the check and I was a free man again.
       

Obviously this whole ordeal agitated me, but I will say all the folks at the state that I talked to were very nice and took the time to listen to me and explain why they were doing what they were doing. They were also very complimentary of the store and our customers for doing so much to help Second Harvest. They’re probably good folks, just having to do a tough job.
     

I am sure when they added up the sales tax bill for the bags it was hard for them to believe the customers of a little neighborhood grocery store in Rocky Hill could and would do so much for charity, but they don’t know Rocky Hill. I did my best to enlighten them!
     

Thanks for all of your support of the store and the various needs of our community and thanks again for letting us be a part of your community!

Tom Butler

 Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881

Grocery Life November 2, 2016

By Tom Butler

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week! The last time I wrote, the Vols were undefeated and the weather was hot and dry. Well, it is still hot and dry. The Vols have seemed to take a turn for the worse. That will probably hurt our business a little bit. Happy people seem to spend more money than disappointed people.

The holidays are just around the corner so I wanted to give you a couple of dates to put on your calendar. On November 19th from 11a.m. to 2 p.m., we will be having our annual Holiday Open House at the store.
We will be preparing some of our holiday favorites for you to sample. We will also have several local and national food companies sampling their favorite holiday items. This is a free event and is a great opportunity to get some great ideas for your holiday parties and meals. I hope you will be able to join us!

The other date you need to write down is December 3rd at 6:00 pm. This is when the third annual Rocky Hill Christmas Parade will happen. This event gets bigger and better every year so I hope you will be able to come and see what a special event this is for our community.

It is hard to think about, much less plan for the holidays when it still feels like summer outside, but I am sure all that will be changing soon. One good thing about the arrival of the holidays, at least for me, will be this presidential election will be over with.

Whenever I talk about politics I get a lot of emails, most of them from people that seem to not appreciate my sense of humor so I am not going to comment on the candidates. I will tell you that neither one of them was my choice. So what do you do when you should vote but don’t like the candidates? I went and voted twice, that way I could vote against both of them.
Who says the election is rigged?

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,

Tom Butler

Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com

Click here to view past blogs

Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881

Grocery Life September 30, 2016

By Tom Butler 

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week!

It has been a while since I have written. I don’t really know why? I do know that if I am not relaxed and clear headed, I can’t put enough thoughts together to form a complete sentence much less a paragraph. I think I have had to many “irons in the fire” this year but that seems to be settling down so I hope to get back to writing more consistently. Plus my Legal Department called and said they have been bored this year so I should get back to writing.

The store has been doing well this year. We have now been in business for twenty-six years and for the most part, we have grown a little bit volume wise every year. If this year ends as well as it has started, that will continue. I have always heard that ninety percent of success is showing up. Well, we have always shown up and that’s a lot easier than being smart so I will go with that theory. I don’t know what the other ten percent is, probably luck?   

I guess the biggest change we have had at the store this year, or any grocery store for that matter, is we can sell wine now. That started in July. I could tell a big long story about  how that came about and the difficulty in going through it but I think I will leave well enough alone. I will tell you it was time consuming and expensive. Anyways, we have wine now. We seem to be selling a lot of it but I don’t really have anything to compare it to so I don’t really know.    

I put myself in charge of our  wine department which makes a lot of sense seeing as I don’t even drink wine. Maybe I should run for president since I don’t know anything about that either? Anyways, for those of you that drink wine, I feel like we have put together a pretty good selection for you and I keep adding things that you have requested.    

I know my competitors in the grocery business have really tried to make a big splash about their wine departments and are promoting it in their ads every week. I guess that works but I decided long ago I wasn’t going to advertise alcohol or tobacco products and that will continue with wine. I guess I give up sales by having that philosophy but twenty- six years later it has worked for me.     

On to more important things. Tennessee finally beat Florida in football after eleven years. Now there is a lot of excitement and optimism around town. I guess that means a lot of babies are going to be born around here nine months from now.      

Twenty or so years ago a lot of babies being born in Knoxville were named Peyton. Maybe that was already a popular name but I think a certain quarterback made it even more popular. Plus it worked for both boys and girls. I guess the popular name now will be Butch so lets all hope the newborns are boys.       

Nothing helps local businesses more than Tennessee winning football games so Go Vols!      

Speaking of Peyton, I finally got the chance to play a little golf the other day and guess who spotted me on the course and wanted to get his picture made with me. He even wanted me to put on his Super Bowl ring. You guessed it, Peyton. To be honest, I really didn’t want to be bothered on the golf course for pictures because that is where I try to escape the fame of being a grocery man but I have learned that is just part of the job. What seems like a trivial thing to me will probably give Peyton and his children lots of joy and probably a few bragging rights. I also have to remember the days when I saw someone famous and wanted their picture or autograph and they took the time to do it for me.    

Being a grocery man is not always easy. You never seem to have privacy, you get pulled in a lot of different directions and it seems everyone wants a piece of you but it is all part of living the “Grocery Life”.        

Have a great weekend and Go Vols!

Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,

Tom Butler

Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com

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 Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881

Hey Everyone,

Abby Kircher, from Abby’s Better Nut Butters, will be at the store today from 3:30-6 p.m. sampling her products.

She is a bright 15 year old entrepreneur who is expanding her business to the Knoxville area.

She makes high quality cashew, almond, and pecan butters with no artificial sweeteners or added sugar.

Come by and try these delicious products and help support Abby’s business.

Here is a link to her webpage if you want to know more about her and her products

http://abbysbetter.com/

Grocery Life December 11, 2015

By Tom Butler 

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market. I hope everyone is having a good week!  Well the Rocky Hill Christmas Parade was a big success again this year!  I hope all of you were able to come.
     

The great thing about a community parade is that everyone seems to know everyone else. The crowd knows the participants and vice versa so every so often a parade float, horse, or car would just stop so people could talk and catch up. This caused a lot of starts and stops during the parade route but that’s what people in Rocky Hill do, they take the time to stop and talk.
     

Society now seems to be trying to train us not to stop and talk anymore. The grocery industry is even starting to jump on this bandwagon. Most every publication I receive now has articles about how to transform a grocery store into an internet service where you electronically send your grocery list to a store, the store gathers up your groceries and then you just drive up and get them. You never get out of your car and I guess you don’t stop and talk. Another thing they are testing is delivering your groceries to your house using a drone. I’m sure some of the folks in Rocky Hill will love taking target practice on drones flying around their neighborhoods. I don’t know if drones stop and talk when they land on your porch or not, but who really wants to talk to a drone anyways.
   

Krogers, just this week, announced one of these programs at their new store in Maryville and plan to follow that up at their store in Cedar Bluff. I have actually visited both of those stores and based on the size of them, I can see why one would want someone else to gather their groceries and bring them out front. I would be worn out if I had to walk that whole place to do my shopping.
   

I don’t know where all of this is heading, but I don’t like the idea of doing all of our business out in the parking lot or at a drive through window. It’s hard to get to know your customers through a windshield or on a computer screen and selling groceries is not a real exciting profession. It’s getting to know all the interesting people that walk through our doors that make it fun.
   

Changing gears a little bit, our Christmas ad will be coming out this Sunday. It’s hard to believe Christmas is just two weeks away. Our whole Beef Tenderloin is on sale. Matter of fact we went ahead and dropped the price of it in case you have a party this weekend before the official sale starts. It is and will be $ 11.99 a pound through Christmas. This is about the best price we have had on it all year. Thankfully, it just happened to happen right before Christmas!

Our other big meat item on sale is Standing Rib Roast. The price on it is $9.99 a pound for Choice Black Angus grade and $ 11.99 for Prime grade. The best deal is the Prime grade which is the highest grade the USDA has for beef. So if you have ever wanted to try a Prime grade standing rib roast, now would be the time. It is usually around $16.00 a pound.

As always, we will be glad to trim your beef tenderloin for you and grind your trimmings so you can make some extra special hamburgers with the trimmings. On the Standing Rib Roast, we can cut them to about any size you want. If you are trying to figure out how much you need, we usually figure about a pound per person on those because of the weight of the bone. We also cut those off the bone for you and then tie the bones back on so when you finish cooking them you can cut the strings and remove the bones to make them easier to slice.
   

Feel free to call us and place an order for meat or just show up and we will get you fixed up on the spot.
     

I know Christmas is a busy time of year and everyone is in a hurry to get everything done. We are going to do our best to make your shopping here as quick and easy as we can, but at the same time, we still feel like there is real value in stopping and talking. That’s what makes community parades great, that’s what makes shopping at local businesses great, and that’s what makes living the “Grocery Life” great!

Thanks for letting us be a part of your community,

Tom Butler

Respond to:tom.butler44@gmail.com

Click here to view past blogs

 Butler and Bailey Market

7513 Northshore Dr.

Knoxville, TN 37919

(865)691-8881