Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/148700
THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Life Unfolds in the Grocery Store by MARGARET DICKSON Back in the go-go days before the Great Recession descended, my VIC card number was awarded a Caribbean cruise, which my husband and brother-in-law enjoyed tremendously since I was unable to go. I know that VIC cards are marketing and tracking tools, but I still love checking my Harris Teeter receipt to see how much I save each visit and how much so far each year. Dear Mr. Dillon: I admit to straying from time to time. There have been forays into various Food Lions and even Krogers when we had them, both the one on Congratulations to the Kroger Corporation on its recent purchase of McPherson Church and the one on Hope Mills Road. But my car always Harris Teeter, North Carolina's home-grown chain of more than 200 finds its way back to the Harris Teeter parking lot, and not just because it regional grocery stores in which many of us have lived out our lives. I is the most convenient grocery store to chez Dickson. It is also the grocery have read with great interest several news accounts of Kroger's recent whose employees wear name tags with their year of employment on them, acquisition and breathed heartfelt sighs of relief when you and other many of whom have been there Kroger brass promised not to so long, name tags are no change a thing. I and countless longer necessary. I love it that other devoted VIC card Harris Teeter hires people with customers are taking you at your obvious physical and/or mental word but keeping our fingers disabilities, a blessing for them, crossed anyway. We have, after their families and those of us all, seen corporate buyouts who come to know them. before. Then, of course, there are the I was a Harris Teeter shopper groceries themselves. Harris before it was Harris Teeter. I Teeter, also known in some packed up my newly minted circles as simply The Teeter, North Carolina Driver's License boasts a glorious produce to scoot to the Big M, Harris section offering us both staple Teeter's predecessor, to pick up veggies like potatoes, spinach, some item my mother needed for apples and oranges and the dinner, and it has just continued sorts of exotic goodies this from there. During the saddest native North Carolinian never Christmas season our family imagined when I first crossed ever had, my sister and I went the Big M's threshold — bok to Harris Teeter on Christmas choy, for example. And, my eve and bought one of the few goodness — the seafood! It remaining Christmas trees for For many, Harris Teeter is more than a grocery store. It is a place where lives unfold. comes from North Carolina's $2, a tree so big we struggled to long coast and from every other get it home and even more to get it in the house. It was so big we had to wire it to a window frame and it fell corner of the world. Harris Teeter thoughtfully tells shoppers exactly what over anyway. One of the few laughs that dismal holiday season was that we country, whether it is farm-raised or wild-caught and offers recipes for how to cook it. were the only people stupid enough to buy a tree that big, no matter what I have never considered writing a fan letter to a grocery store, but that a bargain it was. seems to be what I am doing. Harris Teeter is almost as woven into my life Then came my own family, children who twisted around in their cart (and those of many other North Carolinians) as our jobs and our families. seats to take items off shelves when I was not looking and later zoomed Most of us are perfectly happy with the status quo. along the aisles despite my pleas for calm. Harris Teeter wisely dealt with So, dear Mr. Dillon, as you and your colleagues cope with that pesky the loose children issue by providing carts with steering wheels for them to "drive" and "shopper in training" carts for them to push. There are also lawsuit from disgruntled Harris Teeter shareholders and attempt to absorb all the Harris Teeter stores into the largest grocery chain in our nation, snacks to sample for both children and more mature shoppers, a hit with please remember those of us down here in the Southeast. We know Kroger everyone. execs in Ohio might find us a tad quirky in our devotion to the grocery Over the years in the grocery, one of my cousins refers to as "store to store we grew up with, but please ease us into the change we know is the stars," I have shared the happy news of engagements, pregnancies, inevitable. college acceptances with friends and grieved with them over terrifying medical diagnoses, deaths of loved ones, all manner of family heartbreaks. Yours very sincerely, I have talked politics, recipes, exercise classes, budding romances and MARGARET DICKSON, ConMargaret H. Dickson every other conceivable topic and managed — most of the time — to bring tributing Writer, COMMENTS? VIC # 26XXXX NC home what the Dicksons were having for dinner. Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. Mr. David B. Dillon Chairman and CEO The Kroger Corporation Cincinnati, Ohio Daily Specials • Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner Fresh Seafood • Hand Cut Steaks • Homemade Desserts • Italian & Greek • Children's Menu Banquet rooms available up to 100 guests 6 AUGUST 7-13, 2013 484-0261 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-2:30 pm Serving Fayetteville Over 50 Years! WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM