Leo's Spring Street Turns 50

Tools

By Christy Aust and Ward Norris

Story Published: Dec 29, 2009 at 11:24 AM CST

Story Updated: Dec 29, 2009 at 11:35 AM CST

The porcelain sign in 1960s green has become something of a Cookeville icon.  

A Spring Street institution for the past 50 years, this small market has remained strong through several recessions and economic storms.

Many in the area have grown up bagging groceries and toting them to the car in the small parking lot (a MUST at Leo's) and have had the opportunity to see first-hand the devotion of committed customers.

Their secret?  

As Leo Depriest, the owner for the past twenty plus years, will tell you in his warm southern voice, "It isn't really a secret to us...It's the people that make this business work."  

Devoted employees include Produce Manager Glen Sidwell, who was there several years before Leo and clearly takes pride in his work.   

As we talk, Glen jokes with Leo that he's going to steal a slice of the new cake a customer just brought in. 

Normally, we think of food leaving a grocery store, but as we interviewed, a customer brought in a foil-wrapped, home baked gift for his favorite grocer to take home during this holiday season.  

That kind of out-pouring of warmth and good will seems to permeate the store as clerks tend to customers and customers browse the aisles.

But the reasons for such devotion are not purely relational, but rooted in some "good food."  

According to Leo, three meat deliveries weekly ensure that meat, pork and poultry product is "never frozen and always fresh.   It's never been frozen and never will be...you can tell the difference."  

As a train busily runs the track overhead around the perimeter of the store, fascinating the five year old shoppers, we find ourselves equally fascinated by the diversity of unique regional product like locally made jams, souse and a big old tube of bologna.    

 

All the coffee you can drink for a quarter seems like an economical choice in the back of the store, where a small breakfast and lunch deli has been serving steadily for years. 

It's just a grocery store.  But it seems rooted in something more... genuine warmth, committed customer service and good product at a fair price.  

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