A Conversation With ... Michele "Shelly" Kauffman

This year, Harter House marks 50 years in business. How has the business changed and grown since opening?
My mother and father started with just the meat market. It was one full-service meat counter, and on the other side of the rental unit, they had a bucket of potatoes. They had a cold case with a little bit of produce, maybe milk and bread. Then we moved down to our Campbell store and that was said to be three times larger. Then, when we moved to Glenstone, it was more the size of a supermarket, and we became the Harter House Supermarket. As we grew, we were trying to cater to the higher-end people with disposable income in Springfield. We brought in dry-aged meat items, which we researched a lot. We’ve always tried to build our business on full service. My dad was a third-generation [grocer], so my brother was the fourth, and his kids that own stores now are actually fifth-generation grocers. It’s all owned by the family. We have eight locations: two in Springfield, Nixa, Strafford, Kimberling City, Hollister, Shell Knob and Berryville, [Arkansas]. We always tried to be innovative. My dad was the first one to bring party trays to Springfield – meat and cheese trays. There’s always an issue with turnover. That’s one of the things that has changed. Early on, we had employees that stayed forever. I like to say you’ll never have to ring a bell for service at the meat department for somebody to come out and answer a question or help you find something. In the meat case, brats and Italian sausages are all made in-house from recipes that were handed down through our family. We don’t try to have everything. We’re focused on the food.

Self-checkout use has nearly doubled since the pandemic as food industry association FMI in its latest data says it represented 30% of all grocery store transactions in 2021. Would you consider self-checkout, or is personalized service a differentiator for Harter House?
I hope we never go to the self-checkout. We have visited other grocery stores that have them, and I’m sure they do well in Springfield, but we really do want full service as much as possible. We have this 10-foot rule that if you’re within 10 feet of somebody, you should speak to them. Say hello; ask them if you can help them find anything. We will always help you out to your car if you need assistance.

Curbside grocery pickup has slowed some from its rapid adoption post-pandemic, but it still grew 5% year over year, according to reporting this spring from Winsight Grocery Business. How many locations do you offer curbside, and when did you start?
Four. We were going to start it before COVID hit. It just happened that it was ready that same week. We were crazy busy with curbside. Now, we’ll do 10 to 20 a week [at Republic Road]. We still keep track weekly as to what our online sales are. Back then, it was probably a quarter of our sales that was being picked up or delivered. We had to hire new people. We had four people picking groceries all day long. Now, we just utilize our same employees. We don’t have anybody specifically to pick. We are now less than 1%.

As you kind of look to the future, do you see opportunities to grow into new markets?
We have definitely talked about it. It’s the younger generation that are wanting to keep expanding. There’s nothing right now in the works. We have people call all the time: Can we have one in Republic? Can we have one in Marshfield? Can we have one in Joplin? The one they were seriously looking at was in Battlefield, but that just got put on a back burner for now. We want to take care of what we’ve got.

What has been Harter House’s impact on the community for the past half-century?
Hopefully, we offer quality service. We want to treat you right when you come in. My dad was always really big on learning people’s names. If you can learn people’s names and call them by name, why would they want to go anyplace else? Each store is very close to 50 [employees], but times that by eight [stores]. Over the years, we have done a lot with The Kitchen. When my dad died, it was 26 years ago now, we started a memorial event where we made a donation. It started out to be one day, one store, 25% of our meat sales. It started at $3,000. Last year, we topped $100,000. It’s about $1.4 million now for the 26 years from that one fundraiser.