Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Knowing Your Customers Is Key

Once again, happy Monday. I always look forward to Mondays, as they’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you.

July is, among other things, Independent Retailer Month. Plus, Thursday, being the third one of the third quarter (for 2025), is Get to Know Your Customers Day. Independent retailers are privately owned stores – as compared to the “big box” and “large chain” stores – also known as “Mom-&-Pop” shops, which are usually family owned and operated.

Mom and Dad didn’t have a physical “store” for their family owned and operated business, as they were a mail-order company (rather than a retailer) but they were still part of the small business community, which is a vital part of the U.S. economy, as well as local economies.

Independent retailers and small businesses reign supreme at knowing their customers. They are equally renowned for their superior customer service. Knowing their customers is key, as it gets attention. Grabbing their customers’ attention and interest is half the battle when building their businesses.

“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 50 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 their 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 on six customers, while the other three clerks are “busy in the back”.

For over eight years, I’ve had a running debate 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.

#GiveSomethingAwayDay

From years of experience as a columnist, Mom learned who her target audience and potential customers were and where to find them, as well as how to entice them to check out what she was offering. Generally, she couldn’t get to know her customers in person because Secret Recipes^TM was a mail-order business.

But she did get to know them through her radio talk show interviews and audience call-ins. These shows aired locally and nationwide, plus in Canada. In exchange for a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope), people could receive her promotional “Free Sample Recipes” sheet that also included ordering information for her books and newsletter.

[NOTE: Tomorrow is National Give Something Away Day.]

On occasion, Mom and Dad sold their cookbooks at some of the Good Sam Jamborees they attended. Good Sam is a large camping group to which they were members. Sometimes Mom would also give lectures on her copycat cookery and short-cut cooking concepts to the group.

Building a small business is never easy. Supposedly, the average lifespan of a new small business is only 8½ years. When Mom was building her own small business, in 1973, it was a difficult time, economically, to do so – unemployment was high and the costs of living were too, there was also a gas and paper shortage.

Creating strong, personal relationships with customers is very important to achieving recurring patronage and positive recommendations. Mom and Dad successfully ran their family business with timely, personable attention for over 40 years. They built an honest reputation, which, in turn, inspired positive reviews.

The effect of reviews and recommendations on any business has come a long way over the last few centuries but especially this century, since the internet and social media platforms are instantaneous and more common place, now. They can make you or break you.

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.

For independent retailers, one of the most effective ways of getting to know their customers is the old fashioned way – simply by having conversations with them. Mom loved to talk. That’s why she loved her radio show interviews so much. They put her in touch with customers she couldn’t see but they could have real time conversations, on air, by phone.

It’s difficult to get to know your customers in a mail-order business when you don’t have personal contact with them. In general, most customers typically want things like information, time, friendliness, empathy, fairness, and alternative choices – among others.

If a retailer wants to know their customers, they need to go beyond good sales and service transactions, focusing on fostering relationships, thanking them for their patronage. Striving to incorporate customer engagement by creating a survey, social media event, or contest is another good way. Retailers should also read and respond positively to reviews.

Thanks for visiting! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my memories of Mom, her memories, and other related things. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at therecipedetective@outlook.com. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.

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

IN CLOSING…

In honor of tomorrow, being National Give Something Away Day, AND this month, being National Horseradish Month, below are TWO of Mom’s copycat recipes: “Horsey Sauce, like Totem Pole’s” and “Homemade Horseradish”.

Both are from… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 198). [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 re-share it.

#GiveSomethingAwayDay