Peterson’s ‘What’s best for Frazee’ axiom being put to work

By Robert Williams

Editor

Grocery shoppers have been affected by inflation the past few years and so have grocery stores. Fortunately, for Frazee Family Foods owners Heath and Laura Peterson, the town has continued to support their store.

“This one is consistent and to be honest the people of Frazee have supported me well,” Heath said. “We do alright. Right now is a challenging time because of inflation and everything else. It makes it really hard because your staple things, like your energy bills are going up, but your percentages aren’t. That part has been really tough and it will be, but we’ve gone through it before and we’ll come out of the other side, I have no doubt about that.”

Despite that optimist, navigating the pandemic and subsequent increase in costs has not been easy. 

“It’s a tough, tough business right now,” said Peterson. “You’re paying an extra $500 per month in energy costs and there’s all these other little things.” 

Statewide legislation added to the difficulty. Minnesota’s earned sick and safe time (ESST) law went into effect Jan. 1. Employers must provide each employee in Minnesota at least one hour of paid sick and safe time for every 30 hours worked, up to at least 48 hours of accrued time a year.

“At the beginning of the year, the whole paid time off came on and you’ve got to account for it somehow,” said Peterson. “You can’t just pay it out of your pocket. Everything comes with a cost and I think that’s what a lot of politicians can’t get through their heads. Yes, it’s a great idea but who is paying for it? Is it going to hurt the huge guy, probably not. Is it going to hurt the little guy, yeah, he gets hurt a lot more.”

The Petersons also navigated loss in multiple ways, most recently with the closing of their Osakis store.

“I look at Osakis, where unfortunately, I had to get out,” he said. “Beginning of the year, we finally closed the doors there after 10 years. “They’re fighting now to get another one.”

Unlike Frazee, where Family Foods has been a good fit for the area, it was not the same in Osakis, even after a 10-year run.

Another loss came by way of theft when the Frazee store installed a self-checkout lane. Unfortunately, a thief got away with thousands of dollars of merchandise by abusing the checkout station, which had to be shut down.

“That was a tough one,” said Peterson. “I knew going in that it would be a challenge. Unfortunately, it’s another issue of the 10 percent and the 90 percent. I can’t afford to lose that 10 percent being a small-town grocer and that’s the choice we had to make. I wish we could have kept it. It was nice when you had people with big carts in line and you had one thing and you wanted to just quickly ring it up and run out.”

Despite those challenges, the Petersons are progressive in their thinking of Frazee’s business district as a whole and routinely add to it. They grocery store has the only electric car charger in town and the Lucky Bubble laundromat brought back self-serve laundry to the town after a 10-year absence.

“The laundromat has been doing very well; I’m very happy with that,” said Peterson. “We’ve had very few issues and I kind of wondered with the 24-hour thing. To be honest, it’s surprising how many people use it overnight.”

The Petersons also purchased the Baldwin building from Brad Solberg and are working with other community members to create space for the soon-to-open Gobbler Grub and Pub.

“Brad was so gracious about that because when I bought the building from him he was locked in for three years where he was going to rent from me, but he said if you’ve got something else that could better Frazee I’ll move,” said Peterson. “He didn’t have to do that and that’s the type of people we need to make Frazee successful.”

Peterson stressed that it is going to take current business owners working together to help attract new business owners.

“Brad thought of Frazee first and that’s big. I wish we had more of that,” Peterson said.

Frazee Family Foods has also weathered Dollar General. So much so that Peterson looks at the crosstown rival as a good asset for Frazee, despite the challenges the franchise can put on independent stores.

“It’s become tougher,” he said. “Dollar General runs a much lower employee payroll rate than we do. I could make some better money if I ran a 5 percent payroll too, but not paying my employees is not an option.”

Their employees are essential to running a successful business and the Petersons have been the benefactor of having loyal workers.

“I’ve been lucky and had some employees that have lasted a long time,” Peterson said. “We saw the same thing that first year Dollar General came in. They took a little bit and then it just came back. That’s what I tell people quietly. I said, what’s best for Frazee? Having another business in town, which I think has helped us overall because what it does is it’s kept some of those Walmart shoppers home.”