By Stewart A. McFerran
If Goldilocks were asked to choose a grocery store, she would probably shop at Copemish Family Market in northern Manistee County or Honor Family Market in Benzie County.
Not too small, not too large, but just right.
Both markets, founded some 40 years ago by Roy and Rose Schneider, are now owned by their children.
We recently interviewed one of the owners and managers, Marilyn Edginton, to learn more about the markets and how the family’s grocery business is coping in the time of coronavirus.
“We are a small, family-owned market specializing in fresh and smoked meats: 20-plus varieties of fresh bratwurst, homemade hickory-smoked sliced bacon, jerky, hotdogs and snack sticks,” Edginton began.
The sausage and bacon products smoked in-house are legendary with locals, seasonal residents and tourists, according to comments left on the markets’ Facebook pages. Fun fact: Josh, the market’s butcher, uses a knife blade of Damascus steel he forged and hammered on his grandfather’s anvil.
“We have been very busy,” she continued. “Our business is up about 25% since March.”
Edginton said staff constantly communicates with customers at both markets, so they know their customers’ habits.
“We’ve been out here for 40 years,” she explained, “and we’ve had to reinvert ourselves over and over again … Anybody’s that’s in the grocery industry right now, that’s got a store like the two stores we have, if you don’t change what you’re doing a little bit you might as well lock your doors.”
Edginton said customers are “doing the right thing” by not bringing children to the store and by sticking close to home, instead of traveling to shop in larger stores in Cadillac or Traverse City.
“We have older people who don’t want to go to those places,” she said.
According to Edginton, their markets provide plenty of curbside service and they even deliver to a couple folks. The pandemic has necessitated some of these changes, but it’s also a personal way of conducting business that their customers appreciate.
“They call in for orders,” she said. “We physically speak with them and offer different things. Then we put their order up and someone takes it to their car.”
She said maintaining inventory to fulfill their customers’ needs has not been an issue. Only once did they have trouble obtaining a popular brand of meat products, when the company making them temporarily couldn’t meet demand.
The Schneiders’ family markets are large enough to maintain stock but not so large that they deter shoppers from entering.
“Once again, that store (in Honor) and this store (in Copemish) are the right size for older people to shop in, because they don’t want to walk all over heck to get what they need,” she explained. “They can come in and get the same stuff they buy all the time and leave.”
Edginton remarked about the number of people lingering in the area past the fall season.
“…Honor has had people that are just coming and staying, and there are a lot of people that are not going away this winter,” she said. “They’re going to stay here.”
The markets would like to hire more staff and add to their current “family” of 35 employees. Edginton said they easily could have hired five more workers for the Honor market this summer – had they been able to find them. Some employees are working 3-10 hours of overtime each week.
“So, we struggle with what we do if we can’t get enough people,” she said, adding, “… and everywhere you go, people are looking for help.”
Copemish Family Market is located at 18541 Cadillac Highway (M-115). Reach them at (231) 378-2440. Honor Family Market is found at 10625 Main Street (US-31). Call (231) 325-3360. Follow both markets on Facebook.
Stewart A. McFerran is Freshwater Reporter’s roving reporter in Northern Manistee County and also the paper’s sales ambassador. Reach him at samcferran@gmail.com
