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Primetime owner Alex Webber says prioritizing excellent service is the priority at Primetime and how they stand out from their competitors.
“ I was trying to figure out how to improve foot traffic on our slowest day of the week,” he said.“ It is no longer anywhere close to the slowest day of the week.”
come the perception some have that it’ s going to be too expensive. He combats that with specials like the Wednesday meal deal to get people in the door.
The Chicken Bomb, a chicken breast cutlet stuffed with smoked cheddar cheese and wrapped in bacon, has become a signature item for Primetime, with the store selling 3,000 of them in its first year. Every Wednesday customers can get a deal offering two chicken bombs, a tray of twice-baked potatoes, jalapeno poppers or stuffed mushrooms and a pound of baked beans. Webber says it can feed a family of four and would normally cost about $ 40, but on special it’ s only $ 27.
“ I was trying to figure out how to improve foot traffic on our slowest day of the week,” he said.“ It is no longer anywhere close to the slowest day of the week.”
He also offers a five percent discount to anyone who wears a Primetime T-shirt while shopping. That developed spontaneously the first time he saw a customer wearing one of the shirts initially intended as a staff uniform. The shirts are available for sale in the store.
Once people start coming in, they realize that other items, like his pork chops and ground beef offer excellent value for their quality and are not out of line with other stores, he said.
The house made sausages are also popular, with Cajun pork and pineapple being the number one seller. Webber says they make about 100 pounds of it a week.
Owning a grocery store wasn’ t Webber’ s first idea for branching out after 14 years of being a stay-at-home dad. He had originally planned to open an Ace Hardware store but said finding affordable land to build it on was impossible. Webber enjoys cooking and says he considers himself to be a pretty good cook. One day he and a visiting friend were shopping for some steaks to cook for dinner and the friend told him,“ You’ re looking for something. Why don’ t you do this?”
As the idea developed, Webber went back to his hometown of Searcy, Arkansas and trained with a friend of the family who was a meat cutter and grocer. He credits the friend for many of the recipes he uses, including the baked beans they sell 140 pounds of each week. The same family also influenced the name of the store because of a nickname one of them gave Webber during his high school basketball career. They settled on the name“ Primetime” as a tribute to the friends who helped him and as a reference to the
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