Company Blog

Sign Stories

by Adam Zack — October 26, 2022

Signs tell your story, and your story is definitely worth telling.

DW emailed me an article in Supermarket News this week that brought up how important signage is in the seafood department. You can read it here. SN Seafood Sign Article

“Retailers need to communicate and validate the message of freshness at the seafood case,” Jim Wisner, President of Wisner Marketing, an Illinois based retail marketing company, said. For me, smell is the most important thing in any seafood department. If it stinks like fish, then you’re going to lose customers right away, regardless of of the sign. Customers today, more than ever, want to know how fish is raised, where it’s from, what the texture is like, how to cook it and more. That’s a lot to get on a sign, though. Creative signage will have a gr...

by Adam Zack — October 19, 2022

Memories were now a part of the San Diego sewer system.

I’ve long maintained that independent grocers have the best opportunity to entrench themselves into their community by telling their stories. Stories like how the store started with $100 in the bank, personal loans were taken out to buy inventory and owners working seven days a week for the first year. Stories of signature products get people interested. Everyone loves a good story. The story I’m about to tell has nothing to do with the grocery business. It has surprise, joy, love, sadness, tragedy and ultimately redemption. Like all stories that you should tell, it’s absolutely true. It’s a little long, so buckle in.

Last week my wife had a surprise 80th birthday party for her mom. It involved months and months of planning, coordination with all of her brothers and sisters (there are six!), family flying in from other states, special commemorative birthday shirts for everyone, a mobile pizza caterer, custom balloons and much more. In other words, it was a BIG DEAL. I asked my nephew, who is an excellent photographer, to come for the start to memorialize this epic event digitally, offering to pay him and his lovely fiancé in p...

by Adam Zack — October 12, 2022

Suffering the hard lessons takes courage and persistence.

All of us in our lives have seen hard times. There’s been times when we just want to give up. Raise the white flag. Surrender and retreat to happiness and safety. Rainbows, bon bons, puppies and lollipops. We want the smiley face and the star on our homework. The pat on the back and the “well done, old boy!”. I recently read a quote: “Hard lessons are not welcomed, but suffered.” I think hard times, adversity, stress, mistakes, sorrow and most everything that scares us and that would be classified as negative is not necessarily a failure, but a lesson. It’s a lesson that life brings us that eventually (or maybe sooner) makes us stronger and better. Suffering the hard lessons takes courage and persistence, and when a similar hard lesson presents itself, we are ready for it, and quickly get back to those rainbows and bon bons.

Read More – 1 Billion Trillion

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by Adam Zack — October 5, 2022

Love what you do, and you’ll achieve a sense of fulfillment and reward.

I came across the quote last week “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Now I don’t know who said it, but at first I thought “What a crock of $#*!” Loving (or at least strongly liking) what you do is probably the most important thing in your work life. You need to like who you work with (but not all of them) and feel appreciated and have a sense of satisfaction with your work output. You need to look forward to coming to work, but sometimes you dread it. And that’s just fine. It’s normal. That’s why we have vacations and days off. But loving what you do so much that you “never work a day in your life”? I don’t know. Maybe if you were a professional billionaire. Or a rock star. But even rock stars have to really work to become what they are, and there are dozens of days of frustration and times when the “work” becomes too much. Not that I have personal experience being a rock star, but I’ve read plenty of books and articles about the lifestyle, and I know that they all don’t love it every single day. What I think is a more appropriate and realistic quote is: “Love what you do, and you’ll...

by Adam Zack — September 28, 2022

You’ll feel as good as it makes them feel.

Have you ever given someone a compliment, expressed love, verbalized appreciation or made another very positive comment to someone and they respond by looking at you funny, almost like you are speaking a foreign language, and they say something like “What? Are you drunk?” I was thinking about that the other day – not while drunk – and realized that when someone expresses disbelief or shock after you say something positive to them that it really means that you are not expressing enough how much you appreciate and love them. They may respond similarly with “OK, what do you want?”, viewing the compliment as a prelude to you asking for a favor. It’s the same thing, some people really only do say something nice when they want a favor. I put them squarely in the same camp as those people who never say anything positive. Their words are self-centered and the only “good” they see is what they have done. Sometimes it takes something jarring – like leaving your employment or breaking up with you – for you to say something complimentary. But then it’s too little, too late. Go out today and tell someone you love how much you love and appreciate them and why. It will make y...

by Adam Zack — September 21, 2022

“Remember why I got in the business”

I think a lot of people lose their focus on what their mission in life and in business is. I see plenty of homeless or just plain crazy people who are talking – or shouting – to themselves (or to some unseen entity who only they see) who have obviously lost any idea of what their mission in life once was, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Can you remember what your vision was when you started your business? Did you have a vision statement? How about your mission statement? Most likely it’s something that was intentional and thought out. It was developed and nuanced by a group of people that truly cared about creating a vision and mission for their business and did a great job of truly living by it. But time goes by fast, employees change jobs, retire and before you know it, the only one that knows the Mission statement is the dusty frame that displays it in some office or hallway or alcove. I know that’s been the case with me, so I’ve rededicated the efforts to revisit my vision, update it, share it and live it. Remember why we got in the business, when we were young and had the enthusiasm to conquer the world.

by Adam Zack — September 14, 2022

“I gotta piss!”

Last week I was in Alaska. We were in a smallish raft with a group of other tourists, navigating our way down the Mendenhall River. The beauty of surrounding forest – millions and millions of trees, snow covered mountains, bald eagles nesting – put me in awe of just how beautiful nature is. We were sitting in the very front of the raft, past through some very tepid rapids, when suddenly from behind us this older man exclaims “I gotta piss!”. The guide, who was paddling and steering the raft, looked a little perplexed and told them man that we would be in our destination in about 20 minutes, and could he possibly “hold it”. After all, there are no rest stops or porta-pottys along the river, and besides that, there was no clear beach where we could just row in, let the man disembark and go into the forest to soil some unlucky tree. We continued on, and about 10 minutes later, the man says again “I gotta piss!”. I was thankful that we were in the front of the raft, in case he couldn’t hold it and piss started flowing down the bottom of the raft onto people’s shoes. Luckily, (I think – I didn’t look close) he held on until we landed on shore. It got me thinking about how great leaders ha...

by Adam Zack — September 7, 2022

“A Killer Brownie can only come from Dorothy Lane Market.”

So what’s your nickname? I’ve know Reds over the years that obviously get their name from being a ginger. We’ve talked about Lazy Susan. My dad gave himself the nickname Ace because he was good at most things (but tennis wasn’t one of them). There’s been endless supplies of Shortys, Shiftys, Leftys, Stinkys and Smokys. They got their nicknames from a physical trait or behavior. There’s the obvious ones – Fred is Fredrick, Sam is Samuel, Matt is Matthew. Junior was anyone named after his father. It’s like saying the whole name became just too much work. And there are some that are a real stretch. How did Henry become Hank, John become Jack or Richard become Dick? And seriously, how did Dick become either a part of the male anatomy or a really mean and unpleasant person? No wonder there are no little kids nicknamed Dick anymore and the ones named Richard strictly stick to Rich or Rick. No one wants their kid to be a Dick. Foods you sell and love can differentiate themselves from their generic name by cementing a nickname that no competitor can copy. Seaside Market in Cardiff, CA has sold a million pounds of their marinated tri tip called Cardiff C...

by Adam Zack — August 31, 2022

“Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.”

A guy walks in to see a therapist. “Let’s talk about your childhood.” says the therapist. “Do I have to relive that again???” thinks the patient. Sound like the start to a promising joke, right? I have a best friend who is a psychologist. A great one. I also have friends that regularly seek therapy as a way to help navigate life and attain a happy, peaceful stability. One thing that seems to be a norm in psychology is the need for the psychologist to dig deep into the patient’s past, reliving and trying to ascertain just what prompted them to seek therapy in the first place. It always seemed to make sense to me. But yesterday, my friend who has sought therapy regularly for several years was explaining how much he loved his new therapist. She’s easy to talk to, has the ability to relate and laugh with him, and most importantly is working with him to focus on the future, helping lead him to a happier, more confident and comfortable life. You can revisit the past – mistakes, happiness, regrets and more, but you can never change it. You can only change the direction of your life trajec...

by Adam Zack — August 24, 2022

Little decisions – right or wrong, good or bad – have consequences.

Do you believe in Karma? I know I’ve touched on this subject before, but especially “during these unprecedented times”, it seems like everything we do has a consequence. As a young man, I didn’t really care or think about Karma. I did what I wanted, tried to be a good person and lived life like most 20-somethings. So, one day, not long after I got my first job out of college, I went down to the car stereo store (there were lots of those back then) and was shopping for a new stereo with a CD player for my 1986 Volkswagen Jetta. It was a sweet ride, and the first almost-new car I ever had purchased. As I’m shopping for the stereo, a guy comes up and asks me if I want to buy a stereo and speakers for something like 80 bucks. All I had to do was follow him out to his car to check it out. So, I did. And the stereo was cool, and a heck of a deal. In the back of my mind I knew it was too good to be true and probably stolen, but what the hell. I bought it, installed it and loved the sound. Didn’t give it much of a thought after that. I probably bragged about the “great deal” I had got. Such a dope. About a month later, I went out to my car in...