May 2, 1996: Valassis Inserts, Kroger, and Farmer Jack

Our first stop today was at the Valassis Inserts plant on Schoolcraft Rd in Livonia, Michigan.   This company made free standing inserts of coupons for the Sunday newspaper.  Their competitor was News America based out of New York.  They made 5.6 million copies per week.  They began working 3 months in advance on the new ad.  There's a lot of detail that went into these inserts like bargaining with the companies on which page to advertise, geographical region, and layout.   This was an interesting stop.

The second stop was at the Kroger Company headquarters.   We had a delicious lunch with some of the employees.  We were given bags of Kroger brand food in a nice travel bag.   My particular tour guide of the Ford Rd. store wasn't the greatest.  I realized that Kroger needsed to remodel the store.   Their deli was boring looking with no color to give the appeal to the customer.    Their floral department was pretty scarce and not as fresh looking as the flowers in the floral department at the D and W Food Store.    Also, they didn't offer the customer smaller amounts of deli salads. The one thing I liked was that each department's name was in big letters so one could find it easily.  

The final stop for today was at the Farmer Jack store.  This was impressive.  It had a cheerful look about it. The deli was offering meals-to-go for their Jewish, African American, low income, and on-the-run clientel.  We had a delicious dinner with ribs, salad, Italian salad, sandwiches, and apple caramel dessert.  I liked the way Farmer Jack and D and W operated.

We stayed again at the Holiday Inn in Livonia on Laurel Park Drive.   Went to the pool.   Visited with a fellow student, named Teak and Mr. Gambino.     I called Beverly Richardson, who was my little sister from Phi Chi Theta.  She lived about 1-2 miles from my hotel.   I also talked to Nina Ganesh.    She worked in a day care center on M-F from 7 a.m.-11 a.m. and then worked in the Greater Detroit Hospital in Hamtramak, MI from 12:30 to 3 p.m.  Her father owned part of that hospital.