Tennyson Urges Shoppers to Support Local Businesses

    ST. MARY’S TODAY

SCOTLAND — Don Tennyson, 38, is immune to working seven days a week.

“I have done it all my life,” Tennyson said at his community grocery store Raley’s in Ridge. “Growing up on a farm, that’s the way we did things.”

Tennyson’s family once grew tobacco, now he grows corn, soybean and wheat on 350 acres he owns in Scotland. “I tell people you have got to do something with your life. It’s about passing time. And we chose to run a grocery store”

He, along with his wife of 14 years Betty, opted for the nickel and dime grocery business when he bought Raley’s from Commissioner Dan Raley (D. Great Mills), and Ray and Mary Raley in January 2005.

“There’s always quiet time on a tractor,” Tennyson said, admitting the sea difference that exists between farming and running a grocery business.

“In farming there’s only one factor, Almighty God. Whether he decided to send us rain or not decided whether or not we made money,” he said.

Now it’s a totally different ballgame as his business depends on the 30 people who work there and 500 plus customers walking into the door every day.

And when he walks into public, he has to have a smiling face. “Not only are we a boss to our employees, we also try to treat them as friends. Ask question like friends do and have to be more than just a boss,” he said.

And since it’s a mom and pop store, he is happy that he is part and parcel of the community. “How little Mary is doing in school. How grandmother is doing in hospital. I have 100 plus conversations like this every day,” he said.

He said he loves doing this, but then has to make up for the time spent. “So it means you stay after business hours to catch up,” he said.

He said one of the things customers ask is why they did not close late or why they did not open early. Tennyson said he tries to explain he and his wife have got a six-year-old daughter Angela, with whom they try to sit down with every night to have a meal with and help with homework.

“There’s bath time, there’s reading time and everything else that a six-year-old requires,” he said. “Otherwise, we have fun.”

He said he does not have many new customers visiting his grocery shop, because of what he felt was limited growth potential in the Ridge area. “I know most of the customers, not by their first name though,” he said.

He said Raley’s offers a friendly atmosphere and good customer service. “That you can’t find at a chain store,” he said. Tennyson admits that it’s very tough for him to compete with chains like Food Lions or Wal-Mart Super Centers or wholesale stores such as BJs and still keep the lights on at his store.

“Customers who complain about those chain stores and their poor customer service have done it to themselves because they bypass local stores like us, McKays and Mattingly’s to save a few pennies,” he said. “So what ends up happening is they use stores like us for last minute items that they have forgotten to put on their regular shopping list,” he regrets.

He urges people not to neglect local businesses. “If the doors were to close then the they will have nowhere left to go to for the last minute items, except to drive to Lexington Park,” Tennyson said.

He does not agree small business eventually leads to burn out because of the long hours it exacts from the owner. “We still take vacations,” he said.

Tennyson said owning a small business is not as restrictive as doing a 9 to 5 job. “We don’t have to be here 9 to 5. We can slip home to do some laundry. In the middle of the day, I leave to go to the farm, home and hardware store.”

Tennyson admits employee turnover is a major challenge. “That’s just the nature of the business. I call it business as thankfully it’s not a beast yet.”

He said he’s blessed to have a core group of loyal employees who have been around for quite a while. “As long as you can keep the core group, you can deal with the other turnover,” he said.

He said one issue that pestered his wife’s mind at the time of buying the store. “That was being together 24 hours a day,” he said.

He said he has heard about two obstacles couples face, one of which is planning the wedding and the second is building a home together, which the couple survived in the first four months of their wedding.

“The third obstacle very few people will go through in life is working with your spouse 12 hours a day and living at home the other 12 hours of the day,” Tennyson said, agreeing it increases the chances of friction.

“The store is 15000 square foot, big enough to find a hiding place. So if I am mad at her or she is mad at me, either one can go and hide in one corner,” he said.

Tennyson said a small business never pays for the number of hours the owner has to put in. “Where the payoff is, if that’s strictly money one is speaking about, it’s after you have done your time and you are ready to sell the business,” he said, adding the pay off for him is not the money at this point.

“It’s the three-minute commute time to work, it’s the time or the days Angela is here with us not at a daycare all the time. It’s being here with the people of the community and it’s having all the food we can eat,” Tennyson said.

He said he is lucky to have the Raleys, the previous owners, now work for him. He said theRaley’s have never discouraged him on the ways he likes to run the business. “If there’s a question that comes up about which I do not know an answer, I go to them and ask how they handled it.”

At Raley’s some prices are unbeatable, like $2.99 per pound salad bar, $1 Pepperidge loaf of bread, and then the value fresh meat and the fried chicken that people come to buy from places afar.

Betty and Don Tennyson, with their daughter Angela, now own Raley’s Market in Ridge.

ST. MARY’S

   TODAY

photos by Ahmar Khan

Southern Maryland Oil recently ended the last gas station in the south end of St. Mary’s County, which was located at Raley’s Market.