Bob’s Supermarket is your friendly down-home grocery store that so many of us grew up with, in small town America. In 1988, Bob and his brother Sam bought out a run down, but somewhat profitable grocery store, and thru a lot of sweat equity and frugal expenditures they managed to eke out a living while competing against some major players like Walmart, Kroger, Aldi, Dollar General and CVS (Parnell, 2014). While Bob and Sam knew that they could not complete with the economies of scale offered by larger competitors, they understood that locally produced items, the ability to customize their fresh cuts of meat, hot deli items, and high quality, store made, ready to eat items, would provide a differentiating factor that would not be met by the
