I’m going to use this week’s River City Roundabout to write an open love letter to the staff at Greenlife Grocery. I have no intention of including an inventory of the wonderful foods and other products Greenlife offers, or of discussing how one can do well on a budget at the store by purchasing products in their “365” line and taking advantage of their coupons and specials.
If you’re a Greenlife fan, you already know these things. Rather, I’m going to heap shamefully gratuitous praise on the store’s employees for their exceptional customer service. Running a store like Greenlife must not be easy, as the place is always crawling with staff. And each employee seems to have his or her cruise control set on “fast.”
However, if you need help, they’ll immediately hit their brakes and treat you as though you’re the only thing they have to do. I’ll provide three recent examples: In what I’ll call the “blood orange” episode, I’d gone to the store intending to buy a snack, and had gotten carried away with additional items, all of which I was cradling in my arms. As I passed the produce section, I remembered sampling a delicious piece of citrus the last time I’d been there. I stopped a young lady who might or not have been assigned to the area and said, “Can you tell me where the miniature grapefruits are?”
She would’ve been well within her rights to laugh, but to her credit, she only smiled and said, “I believe you’re looking for the blood oranges.” She showed me where they were, bagged a couple for me, and then went and got me a basket. I thought back to lunch, when the cashier at the drive-thru of a local fast food restaurant had rolled her eyes when I’d asked for salt, and my heart swelled.
A few days later, I revisited Greenlife to buy my wife a Christmas treat. While I know her preferences, I was still feeling tentative as I looked over a rack of expensive hot chocolate. A young man passed me this time, and he must have picked up on my uncertainty, as he stopped and asked if he could help. Once I’d explained my dilemma, he told me to wait where I was and disappeared. When he returned, he placed a sticker that read, “This one’s on me” on one of the jars. That’s right: he gave me a free jar of premium hot chocolate. Now, please don’t take this column to Greenlife and ask for your free jar. Just know the staff there will go the proverbial extra mile to take care of you.
Now to discuss the episode that led me to write this article. I’d looked on the Greenlife Web site to check out that day’s soups, and had decided to get the Tuscan White Bean. However, when I got there, the girl who was putting out the soups told me that selection wouldn’t be available until later in the day. When I expressed my disappointment, she went to the back of the store and spent ten minutes preparing me an individual serving of the soup. Wow.
I barely have space to write about the cashier who looks through the store’s coupon book for me, or the guys behind the hot bar who readily answer my questions about the foods they prepare, or another cashier who laughs at my lame jokes. But if you frequent Greenlife, you’ve likely compiled your own collection of stories about this extraordinary place. There are stores that make living somewhere even better. Greenlife does that for Chattanooga, not just because of its quality products, but because the employees there truly do make their customers feel appreciated.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.