Small town grocer offers more variety

For years Lerberg’s Foods has been able to carry only one variety of yogurt; it now offers six varieties.
That’s just one example of extra food products carried by Lerberg’s Foods. The small town grocer in the heart of downtown Ellendale recently added a new refrigeration system allowing for additional space to give customers more variety.
“We’ve increased our product by one-third,” said Ross Sletten, store owner. “It dramatically gave us more space… a lot more variety. Before we only had so much space, and now we have the room to offer more.”
The biggest advantage of the new coolers is that products can be stacked on top of each other. In the past, Lerberg’s couldn’t stack anything because most of its meat and produce items were in an open refrigeration case. Now everything is enclosed behind glass doors.
The enhancement is the biggest improvement Sletten has made since taking over the store in 2007. He said the previous coolers were at least 50 years old.
Besides offering more variety, the new refrigeration system is “so much more energy efficient,” he said, noting the coolers provide LED lighting to make things stand out much more.
Sletten said he’d been thinking about making the improvements for some time, but COVID-19 made him pull the trigger faster. His store saw a significant spike in business over the past year as many people stayed closer to home and shopped locally. “It was a shot in the arm for us,” he said. “We benefitted from it.”
The grocer said it was important to make the improvement so that people don’t have a reason to shop elsewhere. Sletten said more people are coming back to his store after shopping there for the first time during COVID-19.
Sletten also enjoys a familiar saying that old-timers have coined for years. “People always say, ‘if Lerberg’s don’t have it, you don’t need it,’” he said, adding, “it’s always fun to have them say that.”
Sletten said he worked with a retail counselor from Associated Wholesale Grocers where he buys most of his products. Sletten credits AWG for going “to bat for me and getting me the best deal.”
Despite the cost involved, Sletten said he is happy he decided to make the change. “It wasn’t cheap, but you have to spend money to make money,” he said.
The improvement also allowed for Lerberg’s to pick up some additional aisle space for selling other merchandise. And that becomes important because the store has no room to expand. “We try to make our space the best use that we can,” Sletten said.
Lerberg’s has been serving the Ellendale community since 1901, with the current store being in place since 1914. The store still features the original wood floors.
“We are trying to modernize as much as we can while giving it the old-fashioned feel people are used to having,” said Sletten. He said he will never touch the wood floors or the moose that has been hanging on the wall since 1919.
Lerberg’s next project is to replace all the lighting in the store with LED lights. Sletten said he hopes to have that done within the next month.