Real customer service in a supermarket. Not the Walmart style.
As we've all experienced, at least those of us who shop for food, service in supermarkets seems to be a vanishing commodity. The main supermarket, Cub Foods, where I do most of my shopping has just about eliminated all service to its customers. Even shelf stocking is left up to the company reps who deliver that food, in many cases. It's been self-bagging for years, and self-service checkout is the norm, with only a couple of regular checkout aisles open most of the time. And forget about asking where anything is in the store. Nobody there knows.
Today, though, I went to my local Byerly's store in St. Paul, MN, to pick up one of their great salads and a sandwich for dinner tonight. An upscale supermarket, Byerly's has several successful locations in the Twin Cities. A few days ago, I had a hankering for Boston Brown Bread in a can, and I had looked up the product on the Internet to see if B&M Brown Bread was available anywhere local. I found it listed as available at my Byerly's store, so I planned to pick some up while I was there.
While I was browsing the aisles, looking for it and having no success, a wandering senior store manager happened by and noticed that I seemed to be looking for something. He asked if he could help me, so I told him what I was looking for. He said, "Wow! I haven't thought about that since I was a kid." "Me, neither," I said, "but your online shopping site says you have it."
Long story short, he paged the grocery manager, told him what we were looking for, and asked that he come to the aisle where we were talking. I suppose the manager looked it up on the store's plan-o-gram. He showed up in a couple of minutes, walked us to the aisle where canned fruit was shelved and pulled out a can of B&M Brown Bread with Raising from a bottom shelf stocked with fruit salad and other assorted canned fruit products. No wonder I hadn't found it. Who'd have thought to look there?
That led to a conversation about stocking odd products that didn't fit any category well. Canned bread would be such a product. I suggested that since B&M also makes a line of canned baked bean products, they might stock the brown bread cans with that brand's other products, rather than with the canned fruit.
Well, the grocery manager grabbed all eight cans and the shelf label, and did just that, right then. As I was leaving with my purchase, he said, "Good idea. Now I'll change the plan-o-gram." Service.
Of course, that same store has prices for most products that are about 10% higher than the Cub Foods where I shop most of the time. There's a price for human service, it seems, that must be added onto the price of goods. Still, Byerly's and the other similar food stores seem to be doing just fine where I live. They have a clientele, apparently, that doesn't mind paying a modest premium for actual customer service.
That's how businesses compete with the Walmarts of this society. It's their only way to do so. In the process of supplying actual live customer service, they have to have a higher employee density than the no-service stores, and that costs money. But, they survive, and even thrive, by supplying a commodity that is in very short supply today - real customer service by real people. It's a model that works in other lines of business as well.
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because otherwise, they'll stop what they're doing to walk you to the location - and I feel bad. 
The checkers and baggers are always friendly - they always ask if I found everything I was looking for, etc.
And they have a good selection of gluten-free food (my spouse is celiac) - not just the specially made gluten-free stuff, but a lot of their regular store-brand products are naturally gluten-free.
We have a health food store in town, which has good food, but some of the employees there are kinda snooty and too cool for school (not all, but enough so you notice).
Any customer with that "questing" look gets a greeting and an offer of assistance. I keep the product faced and neat. I clean constantly; sweeping the floors and dusting pretty much all day. I also sweep the parking lot, pull weeds from the shrubbery beds, paint curbing, wash windows, and yesterday disassembled and de-iced twelve feet of freezer coils so we wouldn't lose a few thousand bucks worth of ice cream.
It's a helluva job. 
It's too bad we can't clone your work ethic into the big box stores!! It would improve the shopping experience dramatically!!!
read an article in houston chronicle about 2 years ago.
basically, central Texas is one area in the country walmart hasnt been able to pretty much squash most of the competition and it was attributed specifically to HEB brand loyalty.
i freakin LOVE my HEB 
When I was growing up, Saturday night dinner was often baked beans, hot dogs and brown bread from a can. Life-long New Englander here. 
Everyone else who buys B&M Brown Bread isn't going to find it anymore. Just kidding.
TlalocW
It's time for a Wegman's stretch break!
My husband is from Palmyra and he would mention how much he loved Wegman's as a kid. We moved to the DC area and guess what? We now have them here! I now understand the fascination with that chain.
Of course we have to drive a bit to get there for those items that we can only get at the store. LOVE THAT STORE!
It's the only place around that carries my favorite Seltzer: Polar Vanilla! And they have smoked liverwurst that is as good as the German Delicatessen we used to go to when I Lived in NY.
I love Wegmans.
(Did I mention I love that store? )
with taking regional food out of its habitat...
Here in New England, or Massachusetts, anyway, the typical Saturday night supper when I was young was hotdogs and beans with canned brown bread. So, naturally, the brown bread would be stocked with the canned beans.
Anyway, I also have WTF moments when looking for other items in the stores. They never seem to be grouped in categories that are related to each other. And customer service people are nowhere to be seen.
One local hardware store is like that. I've often thought that maybe the best way to get someone out there to help might be to light a small fire in the middle of the nuts and bolts aisle... 
...that came in a can like the brown bread:
I hadn't thought about the stuff for years, and by the time I did think about it, it turned out to be a long discontinued product. My mother used to buy the stuff now and then when I was a kid.
There is a similar product that can be ordered from The Vermont Country Store web site, for anyone with a nostalgic craving for the stuff. (I haven't craved it that much yet. )
