Names: Rick, Kevin and Kelly Young
Ages: 6x, 36 and 3x
Occupation: owners, Village Market Food Centers
Last Seen: Elk Rapids, MI
Awarded For: making Elk Rapids a better place
Ages: 6x, 36 and 3x
Occupation: owners, Village Market Food Centers
Last Seen: Elk Rapids, MI
Awarded For: making Elk Rapids a better place
Please note that because of the Thanksgiving holiday, this will be my sole blogging on this site this week.
Instead of reaming somebody a new one in my daily feature Bee-otch of the Day, I'm going to honor some people who have made my old hometown of Elk Rapids, MI a more-special place. It might also explain why I've decided to eliminate my banner ad for Tshirthell.com on the top of the page if you're reading this on my Blogspot site. Plus, I've decided to make this post SFW so anybody can read this.
Last Thursday, I was driving home when I decided to listen to a little bit of The Mike Malloy Show on my Sirius. During a segment, Mr. Malloy was talking about how the government should lower taxes for small businesses since they're not the ones who have corrupted the government. Yet, they're giving tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of the country, which is doing nothing but adding on to the deficit.
Later on that night, I was making my rounds on the web, and one of the sites I visit on Thursdays is that of the Elk Rapids News, the village of 1,700's paper of record. One of the articles online was a letter written by a man named Ben Swift, the owner of Swift Audio. Several weeks ago, the village was stunned when his car audio business burned to the ground. It might have been the most-major fire the town has had in a very long time. Arson has been suspected since there was a fire to an abandoned house just down the street.
But, just weeks after that devastating fire, Swift's back in business installing car stereos and car starters. The Young family, the owners of the sole supermarket in Elk Rapids, the Village Market, offered Swift their pole barn on the store's parking lot while he rebuilds. If I'm not mistaken, Swift is related to the family patriarch, Rick's wife, Loretta. Nonetheless, I think that this is a move you'll rarely see in many towns these days, especially in towns the size of Elk Rapids.
Further down the page, there's a picture of Rick accepting a $500 check from the secretary of the Elk Rapids Masonic Lodge for their Christmas Giving Tree. The tree is designed to help less-fortunate children in the area have a better holiday season by asking customers to donate toys to them.
Just imagine if Elk Rapids didn't have the Village Market or even the Youngs. Antrim County's second and third-largest towns, Mancelona and Bellaire haven't had a local grocer in years. Bellaire had Dingman's for decades, which was sold to Prevo's which sold to Spartan Stores and is now Glen's. Mancelona has had Glen's since maybe the 70's or 80's, but had an IGA which became a Dollar General some years back. Central Lake still has Central Food Center, although Ellsworth has struggled to keep even a party store open in town for at least a decade. Of course, there's Eastport Market, which does well despite their remote location.
When Rick Young bought what had been Don's Super Market in 1974, Elk Rapids was going through some changes. The A&P downtown was shuttered and struggled to stay afloat as an IGA until closing that year. It's now several smaller shops, including "The Place", which makes promotional items. ER also had Ed and Son's Market - also an IGA - which became Zagers' in the 1990's. Zagers became known for their Zagolli's feta cheese dips which they sold at other various locales and would eventually outsell everything else in the store. Today, the building that housed Zagers is now a swimsuit store on one side and a Chinese restaurant on the other. Zagers' factory is still in the building.
Also in 1974, Meijer didn't have a store in nearby Traverse City and Walmart was limited to the southern part of the U.S. Today, Fred Meijer is the richest man in Michigan with a fortune of $4.9 billion, the Waltons are worth $90 billion and Rick Young is happy.
Yeah, their flagship store in Elk Rapids and has been around since the 1950's and has been grandfathered multiple times, but Rick Young has no intention - as far as I know - to sell or even move to a bigger location like the Dingman's did in the 1980's. Instead, he's given a lot of his day-to-day operations to his kids, Kevin and Kelly (not to be confused with the ex-WWE announcer). As a matter of fact, Kevin now owns his Alden location, lock, stock and barrel. Instead of putting a burden on the community, he's keeping it local.
But aside from making lots of money, the Youngs do give a lot of time and money to various causes and charities. They're heavy sponsors of Elk Rapids Schools, the yearly Harbor Days festival and other events. Just imagine if the Youngs sold out to Spartan years ago; chances are, the dollars that would go to any charity event wouldn't all go to Elk Rapids. Heck, they would have torn down the pole barn in the parking lot since they would have viewed it as useless and Ben Swift and his employees would be jobless for Christmas. Yes, a bigger parking lot's nice, but the Youngs have put it to good use.
And, to add insult to injury to Spartan, Village Market dropped them as their distributor earlier this year. In a statement released on their website, Rick Young claimed that Spartan's focus on being a distributor to family-owned stores to being a store owner themselves prompted the move. They're now with Affiliated Foods, which distributes the Shurfine brand to stores in the midwest.
If you come to Elk Rapids, there's not a whole lot, but a lot to love. One of the things I like about ER is the fact that virtually every business in town is locally-owned, even the supermarket. Heck, I'd rather take the Village Market over Meijer any day since at least the store's cleaner. Plus, you come home with all your items since everything's carried to your car by a porter instead of getting lost in a scan and bag carousel. Not to forget that since your stuff's bagged and delivered to your car by a porter, there's no runaway shopping carts in the parking lot.
I once worked at their party store in Torch River, which they've since sold off (especially since their Alden store's just down the road). Even though I moved away from the Elk Rapids area ten years ago after graduating high school, there's still a huge place in my heart for . When I heard about Short's Brewery building their bottling plant, I felt excited for them. But, when I heard about their $1.4 million expansion, it made me appreciate them even more. I've talked to many beer lovers and bartenders about the fact that I grew up in 'ol ER and they listen. Their ears even perk up when I tell them that I've even met Joe Short. It's people like Short and even Rick Young that make me love Elk Rapids even more, although I have no plans of moving back (but I do visit a few times a year).
I think the moral of the story is simple: shop local. If you shop smaller businesses instead of big box stores, you're giving back to the community. In many cases, their prices might be less than big box stores. You just gotta look. Their stores might be smaller, but since there's less cooks in the kitchen, they tend to be better-run.
I could write more, but I have a ton of empties to deposit at Walmart (since small stores HATE deposits) so I can go to a family-owned liquor store to get some Huma-Lupa-Licious for the Thanksgiving holiday.
