About Town
Kevin Salus, Chris Barber & Dan Klebba:
The Good Grocers
If you’re looking for a Capra-esque tale close to home, look no further than
The Grand Food Centers. Its three owners, who’ve bagged groceries together
since they were teenagers, are intent on proving that community service
and charitable works are not only worthwhile endeavors but also
old-fashioned good business practices as well.
It’s the holiday season — turkeys on the table, string lights on the trees and Frank Capra movies on the tube — so it’s tempting to try and frame the story of The Grand Food Centers as a parable right out of It’s a Wonderful Life.
If you want David vs. Goliath, Jimmy Stewart vs. Lionel Barrymore, Bailey Savings and Loans vs. Potter Inc., the framework is certainly here, even if The Grand’s three owners, hometown guys one and all, will blush off the analogy at every turn.
If you’ve ever stepped foot into a Grand Food Center — or even set foot in the parking lot of a Grand Food Center in Winnetka or Glencoe — chances are, you’ve met one of their owners: Kevin Salus, Chris Barber and Dan Klebba.
They were the guys in the Grand Center shirts — camouflaged just like their employees — who seemed to be everywhere at once, teleporting around the store, unpacking your groceries, helping you to your car, and recording your thoughts on what producer of Swiss cheese you’d most like to see in their dairy case.
These are Capra characters, to be sure, not only in temperament and idealism but in how much they’ve put into their business, all having invested their own money — often multiple times — to buy (and then expand) the very same grocery stores where they all bagged groceries as teens.
Corral them all into a room for an afternoon and they’ll stammer Jimmy Stewart style — “well, I … uh … we … well” — at the very notion that they’re doing anything out of the ordinary, anything different than what every other small business needs to do to succeed.
“We’re not pat-on-the-back guys,” Klebba will tell you. “Does it feel good to be recognized and appreciated? Yes, but it’s just good business. We show our appreciation to our customers by giving back to organizations that are important to them and us. I don’t think it needs to be anymore complicated than that.”
Complicated? No, it’s not complicated. It’s pretty straightforward when you break it down. For more than 20 years, The Grand has run a Food for Funds program, which refunds participating schools and organizations three percent for every purchase made by parents and administrators.
And then there’s The Grand’s support for the New Trier Township Food Pantry, which helps hundreds of local families make ends meet every month. The Grand has been aiding the pantry for over 20 years, while still finding time and resources for a legion of other charity organizations in the area, from Hadley School for the Blind to the Hoof it For Haiti, a 5K run in Glencoe.
Drop any mention of this charitable work in their presence and eyes drop to the floor like leaves from the trees in October. Feet shuffle. Cheeks turn the color of radishes.
Never mind that independent grocery stores are as endangered as typewriters around here. And never mind that you can’t walk around the store for five minutes, note pad in hand, without a half-dozen people pulling you aside to tell you how wonderful these guys are. How they stocked some obscure can of soup for them, simply because they asked. How they hired someone they knew who needed a break. How they’re just darn decent guys.
“We do know a lot of our customers on a first-name basis,” says Salus, the customer-service expert of the group. “But that’s because we consider this our house. When someone comes over to your house, you greet them, thank them for coming and want them to visit you again, right? Same thing here.”
Somewhere, up there in the clouds with Clarence, you can almost see George Bailey smiling.
Their modesty grows out of the circumstances that lead them to The Grand in the first place. Take Klebba, for example. There was no trust fund waiting for him as a teen. He had to work. It wasn’t a question of if but rather where. So when he learned, at age 16, that The Grand in Glencoe, then called Lakeside Foods, had run out of applications, his first instinct was to bike over to Dominick’s, grab one of their applications and use it as a surrogate.
“They weren’t even hiring at the time, but they were impressed with that so they hired me anyway,” he says. “Basically, they stole me away from Montgomery Ward for an extra 10 cents an hour, $3.25 instead of $3.15.”
For Barber, it was much of the same, 50 hours a week in a work-study program conducted through New Trier. His motivation? “A lack of allowance.”
“I went up to Dan, he was a friend but also a superior to me, and asked him, ‘Where’s the department in this place where we get paid the most money?’ And he said the meat department, and I said, ‘That’s where I want to go.’ So I was here cutting meat all day while my friends went off and did whatever they did after school.”
It was sheer necessity, they say, nothing more, nothing less. They had rent to pay. By the end of high school, Klebba and Salus were living in a $300-a-month apartment a half block from the store.
“We could see into the back door, see if people were taking breaks that were too long,” says Klebba. “It was before the days of security cameras so we were those security cameras for the store.”
It’s only appropriate that to a man, they all call those days their collective “heydays.”
But by the time Klebba turned 24, he was negotiating a deal to buy out one of the stores’ partners and become a co-owner. Getting the money was another matter; five banks rejected him. “You learn real quick,” he says, “that banks don’t consider clothes to be collateral.” That he managed to corral a loan by the sheer spirit of a business plan he had typed on a manual computer in his parents’ home still surprises Klebba himself.
He was, in essence, buying into a pair of landmarks. The Glencoe store dates back to 1953, then under the name 1st National and later Dee Jay Foods, and was built on the site once controlled by the old National Tea Company. The Winnetka store was built in 1960 as a freestanding A&P store, years before it was given its big break in a star-making cameo in the film Home Alone in 1990.
That history is reflected in the partnerships of the owners. Salus has been by Klebba’s side at the stores since he was a teen; Barber went off to open Boston Market restaurants in 1993 but eventually came back. Then, 10 years ago, when Klebba’s partner began leaning toward retirement, both Salus and Barber were offered a “partnership opportunity.”
And thus the “Good Grocers” were fully reunited, this time as co-owners.
The Grand’s expansion — a $2-million expansion in Winnetka with a smaller $150,000 one in Glencoe— was, they say, a direct result of listening and reacting to the observations of their customers. Aisles were too tight? OK, make that part of the renovation. Want more organic produce? Fine, let’s add 500 new produce items. Want more prepared meals? Well, then the deli needed to be expanded.
“Basically our customers remodeled our stores for us,” says Barber. “They told us what they wanted, what we needed to do, and we did it.”
If there’s a point of pride, something that makes the whole group puff up their chests and crow, it’s that their independence allows them to do things the big chain stores can’t, things like build the flower department, and forge a special contract with Didier Farms to bring in ultra-local fresh produce, and continue to offer free-range Hoka turkeys, a New Trier tradition throughout the holiday season.
“We’re even decorating people’s homes with flowers along Sheridan Road,” says Salus. “I can assure you not a lot people call Dominick’s to decorate their homes on the weekends.”
But when the conversation steers back to things that seem even more inspiring, kudos gleaned from fans of the store, the blushes return in full force. They become, almost instantly, Jimmy Stewarts again, bashful, quiet, reserved.
The fact, for instance, that a customer once asked them to hire her daughter, a charming but mentally challenged girl? Yes, they love Molly, they’ll tell you. And it just so happens that people line up at their Glencoe store just for the privilege of having Molly check them out. Just chalk it up as a good hire and move on.
And what about the New Trier Food Pantry? How, after the Haiti earthquake, when donations were slim due to the needs abroad, it was the Grand Food Center that amped up donations to make up the difference? Yes, they say, that they had the resources to do that. And they are proud to have done it.
Pause. Silence. Silence. Silence.
“Well,” says Barber. “I guess it all comes down to this: We’re striving not to be a chain store and chain stores don’t give back to the local communities that support them. It just feels like it’s the right thing to do.”
And for a moment — just a moment — they all smile in unison, shaking their heads in affirmation. A Wonderful little moment, indeed.
Here are some words shared about Kevin Salus, Chris Barber
and Dan Klebba:
As a 20-year resident of Glencoe and a philanthropist for children’s organizations, I have had the good fortune to gain the generous support of Dan, Kevin and Chris on community service events over the past several years. These dedicated individuals have lent both financial and goods/services support to Hoof It for Haiti — an annual 5k Run in Glencoe — raising money and awareness for relief efforts in Haiti. As well, they have supported New Trier Hockey Club’s annual fund raising campaign for Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Bear Hugs program — a program providing children terminally ill with cancer a customized experience that helps him or her feel like a kid. The Grand Food Center team’s bighearted commitment to service extends far beyond the geographic boundaries of the North Shore community.
PATRICIA TALBOT
Executive Vice PresidentIonit
Technologies, Inc.
Dan, Kevin and Chris have been friends of The Hadley School for the Blind for years. From donating cakes for our High School Graduation and dozens of hand-made cookies to our Young Visionaries’ Glow Golf Outing to being a Principal Sponsor of our 6th Annual Hounds for Hadley Dog Walk, their generosity is immeasurable. It’s also obvious that their attitude rubs off on their wonderful employees. When shopping there, I’m greeted at every turn with a smile or a “Can I help you?”
JACQUELINE SABIAN
Employee/Community Relations
The Hadley School for the Blind
The owners of Grand Foods have been generous in their efforts to have an impact on individuals and families in New Trier Township who are in need. Their support of New Trier Township’s pantry mission has been manifested in several ways. Annually, they organize a Holiday Giving program, which encourages patrons to buy a bag of food for the pantry, which in turn brings in a significant amount of food each holiday season. But their generosity isn’t seasonal. During the year, when we have to purchase items, such as ground beef or poultry, fresh produce and frozen foods, they have provided us substantial discounts, and our clients have said the items are of the highest quality. They have also supported the pantry by allowing us to run food drives in their stores throughout the year when our pantry shelves get low. Overall, by providing food for those in need we strengthen our community bond within the township, and Grand Foods has always lent us their unfailing support.