Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Customer Courtesy

Thank God Its Monday, again. I look forward to all Mondays, as they’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you. Therefore, happy Monday and welcome!

The third Thursday of each quarter is Get to Know Your Customers Day, which was observed last Thursday. Likewise, July is also National Independent Retailer Month, among other things. Independent retailers are privately owned stores, as compared to the big box and large chain ones.

Independent retailers (or mom-and-pop shops) are renowned for their superior customer service – otherwise known as customer courtesy – which attracts customers more than freebies and low prices. Although, they are both close seconds.

Building strong, personal relationships with customers is key to recurring patronage. Mom and Dad successfully ran their family business with timely, personable attention. They built an honest reputation, which, in turn, inspired positive reviews and recommendations.

The effect of reviews and recommendations on a business have come a long way, over the past few centuries; especially this century since internet and social media platforms are instantaneous and have become more common place.

Independent retail store owners are responsible for bill paying, bookkeeping, marketing, merchandising, selling, and staffing (if needed). They often take personal pride in themselves and their businesses because they are representative of each other. Customer courtesy is also a reflection of any business and its owner(s).

Mom and Dad didn’t have a “store” for their books, as they were a mail-order business (rather than a retailer) but they were still part of the small business owners, who are a vital part of the U.S. economy, as well as local economies.

These small business owners also have a lot of pride for their local communities, who support them the most. In turn, they often invest (or pay-it-forward) in their communities, as well. Since the 1700s, the earliest known brick-and-mortar stores have been a vital part of every community and the national economy.

With so many big box and large chain stores almost everywhere you look these days, building a new small business isn’t easy. Its average lifespan is expected to last for only about 8½ years. Even over 50 years ago, when Mom began building her own cottage style business, in 1973, it was also a difficult time to do so…

Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 296). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition)].

THE FIRST TELEVISION APPEARANCE

IT WAS THE WORST possible time to launch a new business. The unemployment rate was terribly high. There was a newsprint paper shortage. There was a gasoline shortage. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to at least try to have my own publication. It was something I had always wanted to do.

I couldn’t tell Paul. I knew that! He would have been far too practical to have approved of my starting my own paper, so I enlisted the help of our children. I was taking in ironing at the time, at $5 a basket, and sometimes earned as much as $50 a week.

The money was supposed to supplement Paul’s paycheck, which – as soon as we found could make ends meet – we discovered somebody had moved the ends. So, I took what money I could from the ironing earnings and bought a mimeograph.

I kept it in a big box in the utility room under my sewing table. Paul would hardly pay attention to what I wanted him to think was only sewing paraphernalia. For 9 months, I mimeograph, assembled and mailed out about 100 copies a month of my newsletter.

Bill and Mike helped assemble it and Debbie help me test the recipes and address the copies. I don’t know how we ever kept it from Paul for that long, but I couldn’t tell him what I was doing until I could assure him that I could make a profit. All I was doing was breaking even.

Then Dennis Wholley, at Channel 7 in Detroit, called and said somebody had sent him a copy of my newsletter. He was tickled with the crazy names I gave the recipes and the home-spun format. He wanted the entire family to be his guests on his “A.M. Detroit” show on November 14 – which was also our Laura’s birthday.

I couldn’t keep it from Paul any longer, because I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to promote the paper on a popular, local television show. He took it quite well, considering the state of shock he must have been in at my announcement…

It brought us many new orders for our newsletter, and it wasn’t long before CKLW’s Bob Heinz asked us to appear on his show on New Year’s Day. We, again, took the family over to Windsor, Ontario – across the Detroit River – for another exciting experience and hundreds of letters that followed, wanting to subscribe to the newsletter.

By that time, Paul was giving me every evening of his time when he came home from his own job at the sign company, plus all the weekends just to fill the orders. My list of “Secret Recipes” had grown to 200 and we offered them, on 4 x 6” cards [that I printed on my mimeograph], at 25-cents each or 5 for a dollar.

It was quite a packaging process to fill the combinations of orders, so I put all those recipes into a book. It was going to be our “only” book on the subject, since most of the recipes were “fast foods” – but, as it turned out, it was only the 1^st of a series of 5 books.

“Book One” took off and became a very good seller. I [also] did a Bicentennial American Cookery book as a limited edition and was pleased when the Henry Ford Library at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan ordered copies for their Bicentennial collection. That was July 1976…

Mom originally started her own business under the name, “Happy Newspaper Features”, starting with her first self-published cookbook, The Better Cooker’s Cookbook. The name evolved and changed several times, over several decades, before becoming Secret Recipes^TM.

Mom promoted her recipes, herself, in various creative ways – mostly on the radio. She also designed her own marketing plans. Inspired by what attracted her, as a consumer – freebies and customer courtesy – she designed a sheet of a dozen or more free sample recipes (with ordering information for more); updating them every few years, with new offerings.

“No Laughing Matter”, a syndicated column by Gloria Pitzer (Circa 1970s-1980s)

THE CUSTOMER SUFFERS FROM COURTESY CRISIS

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, we had reason to ask for a refund on a washing machine we bought because of a manufacturer’s defect. The store manager was so anxious to see us satisfied, he offered to drive 500 miles round-trip to personally return the cost of the machine to us, himself.

When the manager of one K-mart store can be that concerned with pleasing a customer, it renews our faith in the value of the customer. Once you’ve been treated by a national chain store as if every customer is there ONLY customer, you begin to expect similar courtesies from other stores. You don’t always get it.

There is a five-and-dime [store] where I shop frequently that has a sign posted over the checkout counters that reads, “Your purchase free if we fail to say, ‘thank you for shopping with us!'” It was always a pleasure to shop there and know that your business was appreciated.

Unfortunately, the gasoline shortage and miserable weather is now keeping us close to home – and where we live, in HUD Heights, things aren’t the same. Because urban renewal has recently taken away most of our business district for the time being, we now find that we appear to need the stores that are left more than they need us.

Or that’s how you feel when you leave a catalog store at the peak of the holiday shopping rush with only one clerk to wait and six customers, while the other three clerks are “busy in the back”.

For over eight years, I’ve had a running debate going with three managers of this particular store, concerning the lack of courtesy to their customers and, for all of the complaints I’ve made, all I’ve learned is that there are many items I once thought I had to buy there that I can now live without!

Frankly, I choose to put my trust in a store that allows a woman to return a girdle, without having to tell where it pinches. You have a certain amount of sympathy, in fact, for someone who’s store is now standing vacant with a sign posted in their window reading: “We undersold everybody!”

The other day, I passed a store that just has to be a good place to find courtesy given to its customers. Their sign read: “This is a non-profit organization. Please help us change that!”

If you have the courage to complain to a store manager about discourteous treatment, don’t be surprised if he’s ready for you with an infinite list of excuses, all of which leave you apologizing to THEM for having made the complaint at all.

Ralph Nader has often said that many big companies are set up in such a way that they deliberately break down a customer, causing them to back off from pursuing a complaint until they are satisfied.

John Gardner remarked that one of the post-Watergate problems was the problem of staying angry enough to do something about it. No major reform in our history has ever been accomplished without a certain amount of anger. Our own revolution was an outcry of anger against unfair taxation without representation.

In the case of the consumer’s complaint, your representative is the hard-to-come-by-cash you’re willing to spend, to keep somebody’s business going. Money may not buy everything – but, remember, it puts you in a better bargaining position.

Thanks for visiting! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my Memories of My Mom, as well as her memories and other related things. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.

https://www.balboapress.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001062253

IN CLOSING…

In honor of July, being National Baked Bean Month, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Baked Beans, Kentucky Style” (like the original Colonel’s); as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 129). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition)]. As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to share it.

#NationalBakedBeanMonth