LEBANON, Ky. -- Higdon's Foodtown, determined to stand its ground as the big guys move in, has deployed a long-time restaurant cook to give customers what they want: home-cookin'.
"We tell them this is as near their mama's cooking as they're likely to get," said Jimmy Higdon, co-owner of the single-unit Higdon's Foodtown.
"We tell them this is as near their mama's cooking as they're likely to get," said Jimmy Higdon, co-owner of the single-unit Higdon's Foodtown.
No salmon can be found on the menu. Here, it's pork chops, country fried steak, pinto beans and the like.
According to Higdon, the store is serving the kind of food people used to put on the table in this part of the country when Mom was still at home and life hadn't gained so much momentum.
Now, once again folks around here can count on biscuits and gravy in the morning and slow-cooked green beans with hunks of country ham at lunchtime. And that must be good enough, because Higdon saw his deli sales climb nearly 40% the first year Mabel Raisor took over the range.
He hired Raisor, a veteran of J.J. McCoy's diner and The Catfish House, "down the road a ways," to rustle up food that would bring people into the store. He got that and more, he said, explaining that "the restaurant attitude Mabel brought with her is worth everything."
She doesn't turn down an order, no matter how big it is or how fast the customer wants it, and she's good at drawing associates together to get it done, Higdon said.
"It's her can-do attitude. We used to want quite a bit of notice to do something special. Not anymore. If somebody wants 30 dinners in a half hour, we do it. Or 160 breakfasts delivered tomorrow morning at six. Fine. But that's Mabel's doing. She'll pull people from produce or bakery to help out, and sometimes she'll come back for the third shift to make sure things get out. She'd work from sunup to sundown," Higdon said.
"I think to be successful in home meal replacement or a full-fledged deli you have to have more of a restaurant mentality than a grocery mentality. You never know when you're going to get a big order, so you'd better be ready -- just like a restaurant -- to take care of it when you get it.
"Stephan told me I'd need someone with restaurant experience, and he was right. I'm glad I found Mabel," Higdon said.
He was referring to Stephan Kouzomis, president, Entrepreneurial Consulting Inc., Louisville, who helped him design and develop his hot food program when he remodeled the 20,000-square-foot store three years ago. The first thing Kouzomis did was design a survey with open-ended questions that was direct-mailed to Higdon's loyalty-card shoppers and handed out in-store. When the responses came in, they showed that Higdon had a pretty good handle on his customer's needs, Kouzomis said.
"Jimmy thought that his customers would come in to buy simple, good-tasting hot food, and the survey confirmed that. Mostly, the responses reinforced what he had thought," Kouzomis told SN.
"For example, he thought Sunday after church would be a big day for hot food, and people said, yes, they would like that. But, you know, I think he was impressed at how much they emphasized the importance of freshness and that no corners be cut in the preparation."
So it was pretty clear that the person Higdon would hire to run the hot deli would be pivotal to its success, and he began a search for someone with a restaurant background.
"Jimmy is truly interested in what his customers want, and he's also open to new ideas," Kouzomis said. "What's he's done, I think, is a good example of effective micro-marketing, and with that, he's carved a secure niche for himself."
With Raisor on board, Higdon's Foodtown is even getting into catering.
Providing food for such events as football dinners, city council and school board meetings and factory parties, the number of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners is a steadily growing part of Higdon's business. That segment, tallied under deli, accounts for some of the huge jump in deli sales since Raisor's arrival, Higdon said.
"People love her turkey and dressing and her meat loaf. She makes a wicked pot of chili, too. And, the side dishes she makes -- for example, pinto beans from scratch every day of the week -- go well with our Chester Fried Chicken, which has been very successful for us. This kind of cooking is our niche, and I don't know where we'd be right now without it."
Higdon pointed out that competition in rural Kentucky has become "just fierce in the last few years." Lebanon itself, with a population that tops out at 6,500, got a 50,000-square-foot Kroger last year. Wal-Mart has moved into the area, too. Danville, 30 miles away, has a Wal-Mart Super Center. So does Campbellsville, 20 miles in the opposite direction. And just next door to Lebanon, there's an IGA store that has expanded its deli, Higdon said.
"Also, right here in town, we have just about every fast-food place you can think of. They're all over the place. Wendy's, Burger King. There's a McDonald's practically at our front door."
But Raisor, as deli manager and cook, has given Higdon something none of those has -- a full menu of local favorites every day, made from scratch.
"We feed a tremendous number of people at lunchtime. They love it. They buy whole meals to take out," he said.
Lebanon, Higdon noted, is a small rural town turned factory center. At least five manufacturing facilities with round-the-clock shifts now lie within five miles of the store. One of them is Wallace Computer. Another is a Toyota parts plant.
"This used to be tobacco country, but now it would be hard to support a family with a tobacco farm, and just in the last four or five years a lot of manufacturing companies have moved plants into the area."
The workers at those companies are the core group Higdon was after when he and Kouzomis planned the hot food program. They're steady, and they've spread the word, he said. Recently, his evening hot food business has come almost neck-and-neck with the lunch business. But that's not all. There are a lot of takers for Raisor's sausage and biscuits with gravy and her BLTs very early in the morning.
"The deli puts us in a position to compete. Without it, I think our longevity would be limited. Kroger would have severely outclassed us. Now we can survive with them in town," Higdon said.
He said the additional influx of competition in the past year has brought his deli sales down by 20% to 30%, but he also noted that they're still above what they were, "pre-Mabel."
The retailer first launched hot foods in 1998 with a Chester Fried Chicken program, which paid off from the start, Higdon said. Then he hired Raisor later that year. When Higdon was introduced to her by an acquaintance, Raisor was working part-time in the seafood department at a Kroger in Campbellsville, where she lives. Higdon offered her a full-time job, and she was quick to accept.
"I love to cook. I've been cooking all my life. I'm one of 14 kids, and I did the cooking at home, then at J.J. McCoy's and The Catfish House, and I've been doing catering in Campbellsville for years out of my own kitchen," said Raisor.
So far, she's been undaunted by any customer request or catering order that Higdon's has received, she said.
"It's a matter of organization. We can do anything, because we're organized."
She brought her own recipes with her to Higdon's Foodtown, and Higdon, who calls himself alternately "the quality-control person" and "the chief taster," liked them, she said.
"Her turkey dressing tastes a lot like my mother's. It has just the right amount of sage in it and everything," Higdon said.
But her meat loaf and her roast beef are the biggest draws. Thursday is meat loaf day and Sunday roast beef day. "We sell boatloads of meat loaf on Thursday, and then on Sunday when we have roast beef, it's one of our busiest times," Raisor said. She then gave SN a rundown on the week's menu, which is kept pretty much the same "so people will know what to expect."
On Mondays, there's alway fried pork chops and either chicken and dumplings or spaghetti. On Tuesday there is barbecued chicken and country fried steak. Wednesday is barbecued pork loin or fried pork loin and chicken tenders. Thursdays, meat loaf is the star. Then on Friday, it's fried fish and baked or stuffed fish. Saturdays alternate between turkey with dressing and barbecued pork ribs.
But every day Chester Fried Chicken and pinto beans and green beans are on the menu. Customers know they can get those up till 9 at night. Going through 10 gallons of pintos and 10 gallons of green beans a day is routine, Higdon said.
A meat loaf dinner with two side dishes and a biscuit or cornbread is $4.49.
Other meals, depending on the entree, are $3.99 or $4.99 with two sides and a biscuit or cornbread. For those who don't know the menu by heart, the local radio station tells them, right after the morning news, what's on the burner at Higdon's that day.
That's one of Higdon's marketing ideas. "It has made Mabel a celebrity," Higdon said with a smile. The local announcer actually calls Raisor at the store each morning to ask what's on the day's menu. Then he puts her on the air live.
"We pay the radio station a flat ad rate for 'x' number of minutes a week, but he often gives Mabel more time," Higdon said.
Higdon's Foodtown, which Higdon owns with his wife, Jane, has evolved from its roots as a traditional, rural market that Higdon's uncle launched in 1950. Pure grocery store, it had no deli for years, and then in 1986 a cold deli was added.
When he remodeled the store in 1998, Higdon turned the 700 or so square feet that had housed a large appliances department into the hot-food preparation and merchandising area. Home-meal replacement literally took the place of kitchen appliances in the store.
"We moved the appliances next door to a stand-alone store. It was time. We're talking about stoves and refrigerators and washing machines," Higdon said.
