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We have happy merchants, happy customers and a great environment. Don’t just take our word for it. One of our newest merchants says moving his 80 year old business to Southtowne was, “the right move!”

Owner of Long's Meat Market
finds he made right move

The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) June 24, 2004
By Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

Mike Wooley had three key questions to answer when Long's Meat Market - in his family for two generations now - came to a recent crossroads.

The first two questions didn't take much thought.

How about moving into a shop three-quarters again the size of the meat store's longtime home at the L&L Market on Willamette Street in Eugene? And what about reducing the shop's lease payments by half?

The third was a bit more of a gut-wrencher: Would the market's cadre of loyal customers follow to a new location?

Wooley didn't even have to wait for his market to reopen at the new spot to get his answer to the third question.

"I was down here (at the new location) those two weeks we were closed, and I'd have about 200 people show up per day," Wooley says. "I've been busier than I was down at the other shop, and I haven't even had a chance to get my advertising out yet."

Wooley - whose father went to work for the Long family in 1959 and later bought the popular meat market from them - closed his shop in the L&L Market on Memorial Day weekend, and reopened a week ago at the Southtowne Shops, a mile away at 28th Avenue and Oak Street.

Yes, the new shop is bigger - 1,750 square feet, compared with 1,000 square feet. That allows for more meat cases and more freezer space, not to mention more windows and a brighter feel.

Yes again, the lease payments have been cut in half. The L&L Market, under new ownership, recently updated lease agreements and required tenants to more fully share the cost of a common area in which the market's customers dine, sip coffee and visit.

"We had a pretty steep commons charge, and a pretty steep square-footage charge," Wooley says. "We always did pay a percentage on that commons area, but the price he went to was much higher."

Ali Pourford, the market's owner since last October, could not be reached for comment.

But Wooley says L&L Market seemed to be positioning itself for more nighttime activity, with darker interior paint, a cozier setting and long-term plans for a dinner restaurant and possibly a bar.

"Us being retail, we've got just the opposite thinking than you do in a dining atmosphere," he said.

As it turned out, the savings in moving to the Southtowne Shops "helped pay for my move," Wooley said. "It took out some of the questions of whether we should do it or not."

He and the meat market's three employees worked through the shutdown period, installing flooring at the new shop, getting meat cases and freezers up and running, and moving the frozen inventory that hadn't sold by the time the old shop closed.

There was some sentiment involved in leaving the old market, where Wooley says he was raised. The old wooden meat cases, which dated to 1947, for instance, could not be moved.

"They were actually built into that market," Wooley says.

But the wooden cases needed extensive refurbishing, so buying new equipment was more practical anyway.

In addition to roomier and less expensive quarters, the new Long's Meat Market also has the advantages of more display space - which means better visibility for low-demand products such as rabbit and other game meats - and better parking access.

"We're all set and running full speed," Wooley says. "The only things that still need to be done are more storerooms kinds of things. So it's looking real good for me. It just looks like a real nice meat shop."
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Register Guard