Customers Phone In : Computer Delivers the Goods for a Neighborhood Grocery

The Golden West Market was a dinosaur, destined for extinction in the cutthroat competition of the grocery trade.

Flashy new supermarkets and little mini-marts were cutting into the customer count of the middle-sized, middle-aged neighborhood grocery store on Cajon Road northeast of El Cajon.

But Steve Pasas changed all that. Two years ago, the 46-year-old grocer married a grand old tradition to a microcomputer, producing an electronic grocery delivery system that has put Golden West back in the retail rat race.

More importantly, it raised the quality of life for thousands of East County families--freeing them from that hour or more a week in a supermarket, that interminable wait at the checkout counter and the inevitable parking lot traffic jam.

Instead, upwardly mobile young professional couples can order their California Zinfandel (wine--01909), their fresh cilantro (vegetables--02052) and their raspberry sherbet (frozen--77792) while relaxing on their patios. They even can order the latest Playboy magazine (grocery--99514), Perrier water (beverage--11200) or styling mousse (health & beauty aids--48556) via telephone from among the 5,700 items in Golden West’s bulging telephone-order catalogue.

From Allied Gardens to Valhalla Valley, and in Glenview, Granite Hills, Grantville and Grossmont, Papas and his Golden West Market have added an extra hour or so of ease to the crowded lives of nearly 1,400 families. The price? $4.

It’s a far cry from the free grocery delivery service that almost every market offered back in the 1940s and ‘50s. In those days, Pasas, too young to make deliveries, helped sack orders at his father’s neighborhood grocery store--Consumers Market on Adams Avenue.

Nostalgia, however, wasn’t what prompted Pasas to teach himself computer skills, acquire the computer hardware, devise the software, rearrange his grocery stock and purchase two refrigerated delivery trucks. Instead, he believed that midsize markets had run out their span of usefulness and would die unless they found a new way to compete.

Pasas’ father, Earl, is still active part time in the Golden West Market, but he has no truck with the computer part of the business. Earl Pasas sticks mainly to the meat department, the produce shelves and the walk-in trade, leaving the computer printouts to his son and his granddaughter, Tammy, who acts as straw boss over the phone-order operations.

The neighborhood market draws its drive-in trade within a two-mile radius, an area where two supermarkets have opened in the past three or four years. In addition, a discount Price Club has opened to serve the growing East County population.

Pasas realized that he had to offer consumers something that they could not get elsewhere--a bit of gracious living.

The few cars parked in Golden West’s asphalt parking lot belie the action inside.

In a back-room office, telephone orders from stay-at-home shoppers are electronically sorted and routed in a millisecond.

Golden West employees, guided by computer printouts, select the items off the shelves, sack them and send them out on computer-routed trucks for home delivery at the proper time.

An employee can fill an average $75 to $85 order in 12 minutes, working from a list routed by the computer, Pasas boasted. An average shopper with less efficient moves normally spends an hour on the same task.

Papas began planning his delivery system in March, 1984, but did not attempt the first delivery until October, when he was assured that the system could perform to his standards and to the satisfaction of his customers.

“I thought that my (delivery service) customers would be mainly the elderly, shut-ins and such,” he said, “but it turns out that the customer list is a cross section of the population, all ages and income levels.”

His phone-in customers include mothers with small children, working wives, pensioners and bachelors and almost everyone else who would rather spend an hour doing something other than pushing a shopping cart up and down aisles.

He has put few restrictions on the delivery service: minimum orders of $20, cash payment unless a customer’s credit has been previously approved, a delivery area that stretches roughly 10 miles from the store into the eastern San Diego city limits.

Pasas would like to deliver to Alpine, but there just aren’t enough customers to support a delivery route yet. And he vows to extend his store-to-door service into the North Park area where his father opened his first market in 1942.

But Pasas has learned from other’s mistakes. He said he knows better than to expand too far too fast or to offer too much too soon.

A much-publicized telemarketing warehouse opened in San Diego in the 1970s and closed its doors almost immediately, murdered by its own popularity. It was not able to handle the avalanche of orders that the new idea engendered, Pasas explained, and “fell flat on its face.” The operators of the firm were computer operators and promoters, not grocers, Pasas explained.

There’s a successful grocery delivery warehouse in San Francisco, where, Pasas acknowledged, he has been “stealing” some of their good ideas and avoiding some of their mistakes.

He’s learned his prices must remain competitive with Vons and Ralphs and Alpha Beta, or the phone doesn’t ring. Quality has to remain high or the customer goes elsewhere. Variety is important and dependability is a must. One missed delivery date can sour a client forever. In other words, Pasas conceded, he must offer everything that everyone else in the trade offers, plus a delivery service to survive and to grow in the increasingly competitive grocery business.

So far, the telemarketing program has increased Golden West Market’s business by 22%, less than Pasas had hoped for but enough to indicate the untapped demand. All he has to do is reach out and capture the customers.

Does Pasas worry about competition? “Not at all,” he said. “I have even written a (computer) program and tried to interest other independents in the concept.” But, for some reason, grocers seem to be the last to enter the age of electronics, to harness the electronic brains and abilities that other industries have long since adopted, he said.

Pasas shakes his head and shrugs at the reluctance of his fellow grocers to modernize their operations. “The people who need it the most are the least capable of understanding it,” he said of his electronic delivery system. “I’ve done it and I’ve gotten 50% return on my investment. How can anyone turn away from a 50% return?”