The Bobby Bones Show - Minding The Store

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

General store manager Karen Banks perseveres through the turbulence of losing her employees, and the huge influx of customers coming into her small Vermont town. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Dot APUS.edu slash military. Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. That's AMU. APUS. com slash military. Welcome to On the Job. This season, we're focusing on how people and business is. are getting back to work.

Let's call it a great transformation, a change in the way workers are thinking. Employers need people to work more than ever, putting laborers in a sort of position of power. We'll be hearing from people navigating this new normal for themselves as they find their life's work. Across the U.S., small business owners are facing a huge hiring crisis. COVID put a lot of people out of work and displaced even more.

Now, businesses need people back and just can't find them. In rural Vermont, Karen Banks faces this issue. She manages a general store, which is the lifeblood of little towns like hers. Well, today, we talked to Karen about her fight to keep the store open as the number of her employees dwindles and the population of her town skyrocketed. Okay, so we're just going to get started here. On a rainy winter evening, I drove over to Bonneville, Vermont to meet Karen. Karen Banks, and I am the manager of a large boutique-style country grocery store. store in Bombville, Vermont, the Winhall Market.

We had the fortune of doing an in-person interview in her cozy apartment, which is very conveniently located above the market she manages. I should mention for the tape that we're joined by Crispy. Crispy's a big, fat white cat. She's 20 years old and very needy. Okay, so the Winhole market that Karen manages, it looks like a typical country store in the center of town. You walk in to a smallest room with a deli, a cash register,

but you take a right around the cash register counter, and there is a lot more to it. We have a produce section. We have a wine room. We have a big grocery section, and everybody that comes in says, wow, this place is way bigger than it looks like. Karen is the face you see on any given day you walk into the market,

and her job basically is to run the entire show. From the time it opens until the time it closes, take care of customers, put out fires, literal fires or like metaphorical? Oh, metaphorical fires. You know, if there are any problems in the day, I take care of it. I receive, I order, I make a lot of phone calls, I sell a lot of groceries. Karen is a creature of habit and statistics.

She pours over her sales history constantly, reads about new and trending products she can bring into the store. She knows good business. But at the end of the day, her job is to know people. Oh, I do. And have relationships with them. I can know a customer and know when they come in what they're going to pick up and put in their in their basket. I order everything.

Every box of cereal, every can of beans. It comes to me. I just know what they like. The windhole market is at the base of Stratton Mountain, which means it's a busy rural ski town. We have a very broad base of customers. We have a lot of visitors. We have some international traffic here, high-income, millionaires, regular people,

just the working class like me. So we cater to all of those people. Besides being where you get your stuff, a general store is also the social hub at little towns like Bonville. If you want to know any gossip, if you want to know anything that's happened, you come down to the store and you can find out. So one of the roles, I guess, for us is to communicate with the kids. community. Meaning, they're heavily involved in all community events, everything that's happening.

If there's a fire somewhere in town during the night, they'll open up and deliver coffee to the firemen. They're involved in the summer concert series in town. The post office is right next door. Just if you live in a town like this, the store is a central part of your life. Oh, it is. Everybody that lives in this town comes in the store at one point or another. The thing about general stores that makes them unique is that each one needs to be so specifically catered to the area that they're in to be successful. Simultaneously, it's usually the only shop for miles, so its purpose is right in the name. General store, meaning you generally have everything.

We try. There are very few times I've had to look at somebody and say, no, we don't have that. I'm very competitive, so I'm very competitive about not being out of anything. She says she sees it as a game, and it's the game she likes. There's about 6,000 products in the store, and it's her job to meticulously look at look at all her reports, her buying history, seasonal trends, just to keep the right things on the shelves at the right times. It's a thoughtful process ordering for the market.

It's a competition with myself, I guess. I like to stay right on it. Make sure I have everything that everybody needs. I'm probably one of the biggest overachievers you'll ever meet. Running a place like this is hard in any environment. But with COVID and complications like short staffing, supply chain issues, and keeping the store COVID-free, Karen's competitive attitude has really been put to the test, and she is constantly in a battle to keep the store from closing. I can't imagine what would happen. I mean,

you'd be driving 15 miles one way or another to go to a grocery. Which in a place like this is a really big impact on your day. It is. It is a big impact on your day. It's gas. It's your time. Are the roads good or are the roads bad? It just would be unbelievable for us not to be here. You might have picked up on Karen's accent. She's not from Vermont. Young Karen is from the South, and she's an army brat. And grew up all over the country. I was born in Virginia, lived in Alaska, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, just grew up all over the place. She had a loving family, says that they were huggers. She was the only girl. She grew up with three brothers. A big tomboy. I can fight. I could give you a black eye. Pretty great childhood.

She went to University of Kentucky, where she came out a highly trained dentist assistant. And we were trained to be the dentist's right hand. We could do anything that wasn't permanent. The dentist would come in and he would prep the tooth. I'd come in and finish it. Very unusual to see that in any state. Which made it a great career. She got paid well.

She did that for about 25 years. She had a son named Kelly. They moved to Vermont. And the laws were different here. So she was making less as a dentist assistant because she was allowed to do less. Not what I was used to making. And so my son and I, we like to do some expensive stuff. We like ski.

We love NASCAR. We like to travel to races. And that's not cheap. So I decided to segue. Someone in town said that she might be perfect for a job organizing banquets at a nearby resort. And I was really good at it. From there, she got hired at Stratton, the big ski mountain in town. where I met the former owner of this market.

I was a middle manager at the private ski club, where she and her family were members. This woman's name was Lorraine, then they hit it off immediately. After Karen's son graduated high school, she wanted to move closer to work and moved to this apartment above the store, which Lorraine owned. When Lorraine's GM left the store,

she asked Karen if she'd take the job. And I did. The rest is history. What were your first impressions? I knew. I knew nothing about grocery. She brought me in here knowing that I knew absolutely nothing about running a grocery store. But what I am is very detail-oriented, great memory, great customer service skills, and knew a lot of her customers.

Unsurprisingly, Karen was really good at it. She jumped right in and has been the face of the windhole market ever since. I know Karen makes it sound easy, but to give an example of how hard. a business this is. In my little town of Belmont, Vermont, I've seen the general store passed through five different owners in 25 years. The burnout rate is high, and anyone going into this business knows that. Did you have any, like, reservations when you first came in and, like, thinking, oof, I don't know if I could do this? No, I'm full speed ahead. I'm that kind of girl that just jumps in with both feet. I don't think there's anything you can't learn to do.

I raised a child with a rare genetic syndrome, less than 100 cases in the world. Karen's son, Kelly, he has Arscoq, which is a rare disorder that can prevent physical growth and messes with your short and long-term memory. So on any given day, he may or may not be able to tell you what his birthday is. He almost stopped growing when he was a little over two years old, but they got him on the right medication, and he's 5'10 now. Don't feel sorry for him. He's got two degrees. He graduated Magna and Summa Cum Laude from his colleges.

He's a smart kid. I didn't raise him to think that he had a disability. I raised him to believe that he can do anything he wants to do. And he does anything he wants to do. He never whined about it. No whining in our family. And absolutely not allowed. Because look around.

There are so many people. in the world that are disadvantaged and not able to work, not able to provide for themselves or their family. If you can get up and walk on your two legs every day and go to work and earn money and make a decent living, you're incredibly blessed. You seem like a very stubbornly glass-half-full person.

Oh, my glass is running over. When we get back from the break, the unstoppable force that is Karen Banks meets the immovable object that is COVID. A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done. Sweats over the details. This is you. But to get an honest day's work, you need a response.

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Plus, we'll never charge a fee to find you a job. At Express, we can put you to work with companies of all sizes and industries, from the production floor to the front office. Express knows jobs. Get to No Express. Find your location at ExpressPros.com or on the Express Jobs app. The winter of 2019 was a busy one in Bonville, Vermont. There was a lot of snow, a lot of tourists,

and when COVID hit that March, everything changed. It just was, it was crazy. It was unreal how difficult it was and how fast we had to react in the food chain business to get the things that our customers needed. The store actually didn't close right away. It was chaotic. They hustled to get their website streamlined for online ordering,

and then they locked the doors, and they went curbside. We went tremendous curbside. We had, and we had a lot of employees here at the time. I bet we had 14 employees. We worked eight hours, nine hours a day. All we did was shop, shop, shop, shop, no talking, no lunch, no breaks. Sometimes 80 orders a day. 80 orders a day.

It's common knowledge that most businesses face supply issues around this time and still do. But in a general store with 6,000 items, the supply chain issues of COVID affected virtually everything in Karen's life. And we had to do something that I didn't think I would ever have to do, and I hope I'd never have to do it again. I had to ration toilet paper. I had to tell somebody, no, you can only have three rolls of toilet paper. two things of strawberries and chicken wings were non-existent. And it was

just awful to have to tell people that they couldn't have what they wanted. Because your job is to provide what people want. That's right. More than anything, the biggest challenge for Karen was to see all of those people that she saw on a daily basis adjusting to their new reality.

It was heartbreaking to see people afraid. Afraid. A lot of people came to pick up their groceries, and we couldn't have any contact with them. And we would leave their groceries outside. They'd wear gloves. They'd be masked. They'd have disinfectant wipes.

It was just sad for me to see how scared people were. In addition to that, a ton of people swarm to towns like this from cities, terrified of the pandemic. She remembers a young couple coming into the store right before they went curbside. And the wife was obviously pregnant.

And he was asking some questions about the neighborhood and I said, oh, are you guys just getting here? And he said, oh, yeah, we just came up from Manhattan. We're trying to get out of the city. And I said, oh, do you realize you need to quarantine? Have you quarantined?

And he said, no, we haven't. He said, you're not going to call the police on me, are you? I just needed to get my wife out of the city. She's pregnant. I'm afraid for her. And I went, well, of course, I'm not going to call the police. I'm just saying, you know, you need to quarantine.

Be careful. He was afraid that I was going to call the police on him. How sad is that? As the pandemic went on, the wind haul market eventually did open their doors up and were not strictly curbside. But by 2022, Karen was facing a whole new set of challenges in this new normal. A big one was population. You know that young couple that was coming from the city to escape with the pregnant wife? Thousands and thousands of people did that.

A lot of them stayed. We had three to five thousand extra people living here during COVID. That's, I don't think, I don't think people understand how big that is for a small place like that. That's what double the population? That's huge. So now in 2022, do you have more couples? customers coming into the store than you ever have? Yes.

At the moment, how many people do you have working in the store? Four. How many should be working there? Fifteen. Really? Fifteen? Fifteen. We should be 15 strong. We have not had a break, I would say, since 2019.

Just to remind you listening, they had 14 people when the pandemic started. This specifically is a huge problem in rural areas like this. All the properties around here got bought up by people coming from an estate. And any extra rooms that locals do have are being used for Airbnb instead of apartments for potential employees that live there. You can't find people to work because there aren't people here. No, no, there aren't alien abductions. That's what I think.

If you have more customers than you ever have, and you only have four when you think you should have 15, how do you do it? We work long hours. The employees that are there are very high integrity, high production employees. We can get a lot done in a short amount of time, but we work a lot of hours. I work anywhere from, well, I think my paycheck this time was 72 hours. Whenever they can, they pick up some part-time help, like a 14-year-old high school student

that comes by sometimes. Great kid. He comes in a couple days after school and gives me an hour. Another guy who works full-time at the ski mountain nearby. And will come in and sweep and mop and do some heavy lifting for me in the evening a couple of days a week. She takes extra hours from them whenever she can't. Karen also, again, conveniently lives in the building.

So the administrative part of it is easy for me. I'm not ashamed to say it. I'll sit with a glass of wine and do the grocery order. Think you've earned that? I've earned it. Yeah, I have. And that grocery order takes about five hours. I'm constantly thinking of ways to work smarter and not harder in this grocery.

But there are literally 6,000 things. And you have to get them on the shelves. And it's not a piece of cake. But that's where with all of this, I said, this market is not going under. It's not going down. We're going to maintain. a standard of excellence, a standard of service to the community because they need that. It would be terrible in my heart and my mind not to provide that for this community.

I spent a long time away from my hometown, a town just like this one. And going to the store growing up, you grabbed what you needed. You saw the same people every day. Often you'd have the same conversations with those people, generally about the weather. it's routine. And I admittedly took that for granted. Because when I ended up back in Vermont during COVID and couldn't see my friends,

couldn't see my family, I would look forward to going to the store in a way that I never did before because it was the one place that you could go and check in to make sure that everyone you knew was okay. And at a certain point, that's what Karen was providing. Not just things people needed, but human connection in a time.

where there wasn't much. This is a small community, and we know each other, and we care about each other, and we check on each other. You know, they wanted to know if we were okay, and we wanted to know if they were okay. Karen had to shut her doors in the beginning before she went curbside. My town's general store did the same. So we got a taste of what the town would look like without it temporarily. But the idea of it closing and the idea of it not being there is something I don't think I've

ever considered. And I'm sure that people here never considered. Like it's the, it's the general store. It's the win-home market. It will be there. And there's been a lot of uncertainty in the last few years. And there has been. And it seems that you maybe are like the one certain thing here. Well, we like to think we're the rock. You know, it's like what would people, we had to help people. there was no question that we had to help them through the lockdown. There's just not a question that it won't be here. Regardless of staffing issues, supply chain, or whatever the world throws their way, the town of Bonneville can rest easy knowing that Karen Banks is not a whiner.

And if she wants to do something, she is going to do it. I agreed to it, and I believe that if you take it on, do it with a smile. And I'll do it with a smile at 8 o'clock in the morning. and I'll do it if I'm there at 8 o'clock at night. I'll still have the same smile. Just so you know listening, Karen has a vacation coming up. She's going to the Philippines with one of her coworkers in the store. It'll be the first break they've had since 2019.

For on the job, I'm Otis Gray. All right, if you have ever dealt with a traditional home security company, you know the drill. Expensive monthly fees, contracts that lock you in for years, and waiting around for a technician to set everything up. It's a lot. Well, now they're Simply Safe. They have completely changed the game. Simply Safe has no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, no being trapped.

They earn your business by actually keeping you safe, not by locking you in. Setting up is so easy. You customize your system at SimplySafe.com. It ships to your door in a few days, and with the app guided setup, you can have everything installed and armed in under an hour. No technician needed. And it's not just a camera. It's a full ecosystem. of sensors, cameras for inside and outside, and 24-7 professional monitoring. If there's ever a break-in, a fire, or a flood, SimplySafe's agents are on it immediately. They were also named America's best customer service by Newsweek, which honestly tracks. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting Simplysafe.com slash bones.

That's half off at simplysafe.com slash bones. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Service opens doors and at American Military University it can open doors for the whole family if you have a loved one who served in the military you may qualify for reduced tuition AMU offers flexible online programs

designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward wherever life takes you learn more at AMU dot APUS dot EDU slash military open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University That's AMU. APUS.edu.

Air Tasker helps you get your weekends back. I need a screen printer. And someone to wait in line for my everything bagel. Go to Airtasker.com or download the app. Local taskers do anything. And everything. Air Tasker, get anything done? Make every day feel epic in the all-new Hyundai Palisade hybrid.

The Palisade Hybrid is packed full of features, cutting edge tech and up to an EPA estimated 619 miles of range on select trims and class leading interior space. Seating configurations for 7-8 passengers, available H-track all-wheel drive so you can be ready to go anywhere in style. Learn more about the Hyundai Palisade at Hyundai USA.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.