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ASCENDENT INDEPENDENTS<br />
Keil’s Fresh Food Stores<br />
The San Diego-based retailer intertwines family and community.<br />
BY CAROL M. BAREUTHER, RD<br />
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEAN BARNES<br />
Some grocers claim to be neighborhood<br />
markets. Keil’s Fresh Food<br />
Stores is the real embodiment of<br />
such a category. Consider that the<br />
general manager at the Clairemont<br />
location of this family-run two-store chain<br />
based in San Diego, CA, met his wife in the<br />
grade school down the street and was once<br />
the community’s paperboy.<br />
The produce director has been working at<br />
the store a long time, and his brother works<br />
at the supermarket’s second location in San<br />
Diego’s San Carlos neighborhood. What’s<br />
more, customers who visited the store as kids<br />
continue to come back with their children<br />
not only to shop weekly but also to visit<br />
Keil’s must-do annual community Pumpkin<br />
Patch, which is staged in the parking lot at<br />
Halloween. This neighborhood theme carries<br />
straight into Keil’s produce department.<br />
“Produce is more than just another department<br />
in the store,” says general manager, Brian<br />
Haire. “It’s the gateway to the store. As you<br />
make your way through the store, one of our<br />
four produce employees greets and welcomes<br />
customers by name.”<br />
It All Began Up North<br />
Otto Keil, grandfather of Keil’s owner, Rick<br />
Keil, opened the first namesake market in the<br />
early 1920s. Otto’s son, Ron, took over the<br />
operations opening more stores throughout<br />
the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s, 1960s<br />
and 1970s. Rick, Ron’s son, moved south to<br />
southern California to attend the University<br />
of Southern California and worked in retail<br />
meat departments while obtaining his business<br />
degree. This training, plus frequent talks with<br />
his father while growing up akin to some<br />
families talk sports or current events, gave Rick<br />
a great education about the grocery business.<br />
In 1990, Ron and Rick had the opportunity<br />
to purchase two Vons stores, one of which was<br />
located at 3015 Clairemont Drive.<br />
“I started here on the first day Keil’s opened<br />
after hearing what the Keil family stood for<br />
in terms of family and community. I worked<br />
at Vons, but at the time, I felt like I was just<br />
a number there,” says Haire.<br />
The father-and-son Keil team opened a<br />
second location at 7403 Jackson Drive, in<br />
the San Diego suburb of San Carlos in the<br />
early 2000s.<br />
According to San Diego’s government<br />
website, the Clairemont and San Carlos<br />
communities, both located north of downtown<br />
San Diego, are home to collectively some<br />
100,000 people. Clairemont is the larger of<br />
the two population-wise with proportionally<br />
more Hispanic, Asian and African American<br />
shoppers, although in both communities<br />
Caucasians form the major ethnic group.<br />
Family sizes in both areas follow the national<br />
average of two to three people.<br />
Quality Is The Sourcing Keyword<br />
Produce is ordered weekly by Ed Garcia,<br />
produce manager at Clairemont for more than<br />
two decades. Garcia’s brother, Jessie, does the<br />
22 / AUGUST 2016 / PRODUCE BUSINESS