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Pechin's MartBreaks
Many Rules, but I'{ot
The One on Pricing
Funky Discount Center Lures
Bargain-Seeking Throngr
To Pennsylvania Hamlet
By
Sus.l,N
C*nY
Stolf Reporter otTrn WALL SmEET JoURN L
DUNBAR, Pa. - Sullivan D'Amico fl gures
there must be a worse Iocation for a shop-
ping center than the woods outside tlis Allegheny Mountain hamlet, but he isn't sure
where it is. To be safe, he calls his site the
worst location in the world.
Isecond
To get there, you take highway 119 to
about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh and fol-
low the landmarks: left at Butchko Bros.
junkyard, right at the Sons of Italy l-odge
right again by the limestone slag plant.
Then follow the hand-painted sigr at the
833,
fork in the road toward the clearing down by
Gist Run Creek.
There sits a ramshackle collection of low'
yellowish buildings arranged around a rutted parking lot. Go inside the grocery store
and you will find, under the dim lights, aisle
after unmarked aisle filled with high stacks
of merchandise arranged in no discernible
order. The goods are piled on a floor part
concrete, part linoleum and part undulating
planks. The roof sags, and leaks when lt
planks.
'iains. The floors could stand a good sweeping.
But low-proflle as this isolated establish'
ment is, its prices are lower still, and as a
result the place has one other notable fea'
tur€: a throng of highly motivated shoppers
grabbing the bargaln merchandise fmm
wherever they flnd it-not necessarily ex'
cluding other people's shopping carts'
"Dress down when you shop here," advises
one customer, Ed Gaus of Cumberland' Md.
"And be prepared for the search and seizure
method of finding groceries."
Cheap Eats
The name of the place is Pechin's' pronounced with a long "E," and among the
budget-conscious hereabouts it is celebrated.
Though the discount goods range from baby
clothes to rifles, t}te prices at the cafeterla
will do for an illustration: Coffee is a nickel;
homemade doughnuts, too, are five cents;-a
hearty meal of meat, potatoes, a vegetable
and a roll is ?9 cents.
nla and parts of Ohio, Maryland and West
Virginia. Their mostly American-made cars
and trucks arrive decorated with bumper
stickers that read "Hungry? Eat Your Im'
port" or that laud the National Rifle Assoclauon.
i'
n8U
The supermarket is the centerpiece, and
its
customers buy
in
volume. Marcella
Pugh, who lives 40 miles away in Daisytown,
Pa.. is loading her car with $320 in groceries
that she and her daughter have bought. "It's
funky here, but tle prices are right," she
says.
That is because the owner also buys in
volume, and only what he can get at a good
price. Mr. D'Amico deals directly with manufacturers and buys only specials. His 300
nonunion employees earn between the minimum wage to a top of $7 an hour. And, although Pechin's does provide shopping bags
and employees to help trundle tJtem out to
customers' cars, it doesn't spend a lot of
money on such extras as bright lights,
piped-in music, advertising-or even clean
restrooms.
Rationing Meat
Compared with the average supermarket's yearly sales of about $7 million, or perhaps $16 million for the sprawling ones that
include goods like houseplants and auto
parts, Pechin's gTocery sales totaled about
$30 million last year. In a single day, meat
manager John Agona says, his department
goes through 1? cattle carciuses and 100
cases of chicken.
Meat is sold too cheaply to make a profit.
Rib steaks, graded good rather than choice,
were going for $2.29 a pound on a recent
day. As a result of the policy, the
scene
around the meat counter is often a melee,
and the store has to resort to rationing.
"People will kill to get those meats," says
Tracy Robb, a Pittsburgh travel-agency
manager.
Competitors are somewhat less fond of
Pechin's. One says tlat "we try to ignore"
tJte place. Another insists Pechin's isn't
really a comp€titor because it has limited
variety and is "filthy.?' But Dale Moss, the
owner of a modern, full-service supermarket
a few miles away in Uniontown, Pa., says
Pechin's simply is after a different crowd
than his "more upscale" clientele.
"Pechin's customers accept their shopping tour more as a challenge than as a
pleasure," Mr. Moss contends. "A husbandwife team pulling a shopping cart through
that parking lot in the winter-now that's a
challenge."
But Maxwell Scherb, an inspector for the
state agriculture department, gives
the
owner credit. Mr. D'Amico "knows his audience," Mr. Scherb says. "Haagen-Dazs ice
cream and Godiva chocolates aren't going to
in Dunbar, Pa."
Mr. D'Amico opened here in
The emporlum attracts malnly blue-col' move big
lar flocks from all over western Pennsylva'
.r
Jw.w^-a
Pleaselurn
1947,
to Page 14, Column
buying
1
Pennsylvania Market
Breaks Many Rules,
iBut Not One on Prices
+1.
.+] "
;i:
:lfrit
Continued From First Page
tne grocery business his nelghbors oper-
;,gted ln the basement. By then, Dunbar's
'. ilory days were already behind lt. It had
,[een a thrtving lron.maklng center ln the
;UltI
century, the scene of lnnovations that
,lfwolved the use of coke and ot]er pro:-Cesses. Pechin's ls narned after an early
presldent of the now-defunct Dunbar Iron
Wbrks.
The present supermarket, begun wlth 2,1ffi square feet of floor space, grew to 50,000
as Mr. D'Amlco tacked on addltlons, Wth
help from his son Donald, 42, he also added
such shops as a drugstore, a farm-supply
and hardware store and a clothing store. A
boutlque lt lsn't. Numerous signs polntedly
state that "clothing must be tried on ln
dresslng rooms, not in the aisles."
The elder Mr. D'Amico, a friendly man
of 60, admlts that his place isn't fancy-looking but says, "We Just have to keep working
at it. It's a lof better than it has been." He
adds, "Our priority is to $ve good values."
Frequent visitors warn agalnst shopping
here around the third of each month, Just af-
ter welfare and Soclal Security checks arrive in the mail. Mr. D'Amico says the gro-
cery store handles such a crush of food
stamps that inspectors often think "there
must be some hanky-panky going on."
And the cafeteria is particularly jammed
on Mondays, because the elderly can eat for
free-yes, free-that day. Senior-citizen cen-
ters send busloads of people in, and, of
course, they shop as well as eat.
This and the meat are obviously loss
leaders, but Pechin's seems to ignore as
many merchandising maxims as it honors:
isn't convenient, isn't aesthetic, it
doesn't advertise much, and it isn't open
Sundays. One competitor says the place "de.
It
it
fies everything we know as modern market-
ing."
Mrs. Robb, the Pittsburgh travel agent,
sees
it another way; Pechin's,
she says,
a shopping trip back in time."
.
.
"is