Community crossroads

Roberts in Woodside is more than a market. In many respects, it's the crossroads of this affluent community.

The rich and famous exchange gossip while shopping. Carpenters and painters working on monster homes in the area buy $5 sandwiches at the busy deli counter and eat them, sitting on their pickup trucks in the parking lot.

Hyper dot-comers (what's left of them) rub shoulders with conservative, old-economy CEOs. Students from Woodside Elementary crowd the narrow aisles after school, buying snacks and dropping wrappers on the floor.

Colorful-suited bicycle groups stop on weekends for refreshment. And the crammed bulletin board provides an outlet for people selling everything from terrier puppies to poison-oak remedies.

Why does Roberts, as its called, attract such a diverse group? Owner George Roberts points to the location (the junction of Woodside, Mountain Home and Canada roads). "Also, we have the products people want and need," he says. And the service is friendly and helpful. "We keep a lot of checkers in place so that customers don't have a long wait. We work hard on that."

But it appears that the clientele also is attracted by the personalities, knowledge of the business, and attention to details of the owner and his daughter Christine, who are members of a four-generation family of grocers.

The grandson and son of San Francisco butchers, Mr. Roberts worked for two years in the family business in the city after graduating from Stanford in 1956 (after two years at Menlo College) and a two-year hitch in the Army infantry where he taught English and math to U.S. soldiers in Germany who had little education.

In 1959, his cousin, who lived in Woodside, told Mr. Roberts that "an old country store down here is for sale. Why don't you take a look at it?"

J. Emott Caldwell owned the store, and the land belonged to James Neuman.

"It was a general store that was a little different than what I was used to in the city," says Mr. Roberts. "It was a small, condensed country store with a hardware shop in the back down here. They poured motor oil on the wood floors to keep down the dust."

At first he wasn't excited about the opportunity. "I was single, this was before [Interstate] 280, and San Francisco was a more interesting place to be."

But, he says, he knew he wasn't a candidate for working for someone. And having to belong to a union rankled him, including having to pay dues. "They told me when I could work and what I could do. So I took a flier and jumped in the water."

Shortly thereafter, he began to expand the store and built a second story for offices. Then, he bought the building and land from the Neuman family. In another deal, he bought property across Woodside Road, which now houses Buck's restaurant and seven other businesses.

"I got the luck of the draw," he recalls. "They were willing to finance it. And life was easy then. I didn't have to go to a banker, and I didn't have to drill holes in the floor to see what was underneath it."

His father retired from his grocery business in San Francisco, moved to Woodside, and "helped make this thing work."

The market has evolved over the years. Mr. Roberts calls it bricklaying: "It's not like the dot-coms, which built an infrastructure from the top. I built from the bottom, one brick at a time."

He moved the hardware store across the street to make more room for the grocery business.

As Mr. Roberts' three children grew up, they worked in the store at various times, but Christine was the one who developed a real interest. Her sister started a software company, and her brother, although "kind of interested," is pursuing his graphics-arts talent.

Christine says she wanted to become a child psychologist but also wanted to stay with the store since she started working there in the summer at age 14. "I didn't know whether it was appropriate, and my father said he would never force the business on any of the kids."

After getting her degree in psychology at the University of California, San Diego, she wanted to get a graduate degree at New York University.

"I was hesitant about working for my father, and I did a lot of thinking about it. I always liked the store, but that business is not a female business."

Her father agrees: "It's moving boxes, wearing knee pads, and getting your hands all beat up opening crates." He also points out that it involves bad working hours, late nights, and monotonous work.

Ms. Roberts, however, changed her mind and told her father in 1991 that she was interested. She started "working on the floor and in the deli." Today, she does "almost everything," but her primary interest is the market's specialty products in the grocery department.

"This is really fun," she says, "especially talking about the great products we have" with the store's more than 2,000 daily customers.

After years of building the store by being a hands-on owner, Mr. Roberts has handed over almost all of the product work to his daughter, and he concentrates on personnel matters, although he still can be found on the floor. And on a recent afternoon, he was patrolling his parking lot, jotting down license numbers of cars that were illegally parked there for hours and using up precious space.

He says the grocery business is like an iceberg. The 10 percent that is visible is the fun part. "The rest of it below water is the gross part _ the government stuff and all the threats they make on you."

Is the market's success the result of high prices? Not so, says Mr. Roberts.

"Sure we charge for our unique, high-quality products that you can't find in the Safeway or our other competitors. We have products people want, and they're willing to pay for them. But we also subscribe to a service, which provides prices of our competitors on similar products, and we aren't out of line on them."

He cites articles done by journalists who've made their own comparisons to back up the claim of competitive pricing on many standard items and reasonable prices for special ones.

This reporter compared Roberts and Safeway prices on the same day for seven identical, basic products: eggs, orange juice, margarine, milk, cereal, cottage cheese, and bread. Safeway prices were higher for eggs, margarine, milk and bread, but lower for orange juice. Prices were the same for cereal and cottage cheese.
Great floors

Mr. Roberts points to the market's wooden floors. "People love them," he says. "It is the most talked about thing in the store. They're a big hit."

And Christine talks about the customers who come in every day and talk to the staff by name.

Are there complaints? Sure, father and daughter say. Sometimes the sandwiches that are ordered through the market's new Web site don't have everything the customers ordered.

"We get some negative comments, but we deal with them promptly," says Mr. Roberts. "I do it personally."


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