“The customer is always right,” is an old retail adage that modern retailers often tweak to, “the customer is sometimes right.” Not Sendik's Food Market. This family owned and operated supermarket chain, based in Whitefish Bay, Wis., takes customer service to heart with a mission statement that focuses on how to provide the best grocery shopping experience, period. Employees are required to greet all customers they see, even if they are just walking past their station.

Sendik's in-store bakeries exemplify this customer service promise. When a customer came to the Grafton in-store bakery looking for cookies on a stick, General Bakery Manager Rhonda Klug didn't have the sticks in stock and couldn't get them in time for the customer's event. Klug assured the customer she would provide the cookies, and then contacted another local bakery to make the cookies for the customer. Two days later, the customer returned to Sendik's to pick up her cookies, and all three parties (the customer, Sendik's and the local bakery) were happy.

Sendik's has a long history of making customers happy. The Balistreri family began peddling fruits and vegetables in a horse-drawn wagon at the turn of the 20th century. Thomas Balistreri opened the first Sendik's store in 1949, and in 1975, after Tom's sons, Ted and Tom Jr., took over the company, the store expanded from just fruits and vegetables to groceries and perimeter departments, such as bakery and deli. The original bakery did not bake on site, but instead established relationships with area bakeries to offer some of their signature products in Sendik's.

In 2001, Ted's children, Ted, Nick, Patrick and Margaret, took over the reins and began expanding beyond the original store in Whitefish Bay. Sendik's Food Market now has seven Milwaukee-area locations with an eighth (Germantown) slated to open later this year. Once the Germantown location opens, the company will have opened four stores in two years, a rapid growth pace for the small company.

Advent of hot baking

When the Mequon store opened about four years ago, Sendik's introduced its first in-store bakery that baked on premise. Hot baking became a draw for the store, so each subsequent store has featured an in-store bakery.

John Wollner, director of deli/cheese/bakery operations, joined the company six years ago as a part-time job while working as a chef at an area hotel. When the owners began expanding, they asked him to come on board full time as head chef in the deli department. Wollner then became deli manager and oversaw the cheese department, which is no small task in cheese-loving Wisconsin. Two years ago, he added bakery to his list of duties when he was named director of the three departments.

The stores' bakery sizes vary greatly, with the smallest being the original Whitefish Bay store and the largest in the Greenfield store that opened this month. “As we've grown, each bakery has gotten bigger,” Wollner says. Bakeries are equipped with a cooler/freezer, oven and proofer at a minimum.

Each bakery has a bakery manager and eight to 20 employees. The bakery managers have almost complete autonomy to run their bakery to fit their store's demographic. “We give managers full power to set their cases with what they want,” Wollner says. “Obviously, we have certain guidelines that we need to maintain, but it's up to the managers to find what works in their area. Product lines can differ widely from store to store.”

Although all Sendik's locations are in the Milwaukee area, the demographics of each store's customers vary. Certain bakery items that sell in one location do not sell in another. For example, challah sells well in the Mequon location, but is not as successful in the Grafton location. Allowing the managers to run their bakeries similarly to a retail bakery gives the company the flexibility to meet customers' needs.

Franklin customers love their peanut squares, says Kathy Endthoff, Franklin's bakery manager. The Sendik's specialty is made with white cake layers filled with marshmallow cream, then iced with white buttercream. The iced squares are dipped in peanuts to coat them completely. “I never saw them before I came to Sendik's. It's pretty much a full time job just making peanut squares. They are on sale this week, and we sell about 100 million of them weekly even when they aren't on sale,” Endthoff jokes.

Bakery managers regularly introduce new products they think will sell in their location. “We can submit the ingredients and the cost to our general bakery manager, and we can pretty much pick up anything that sells in our store,” Endthoff adds. “They [the Balistreris] give us the freedom to pick our own products, which is really nice. That's what you really hire a manager for.”