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T'ville losing grocery Southern Family Market in Thomasville will be closing its doors before the end of the month leaving the city with only two grocery stores. Southern Family Markets, based in Birmingham and an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers, is closing or selling 13 stores in Alabama and nearly 40 across the southeast. Southern Family Markets purchased the grocery store formerly operated by Food Fair last year. Before that it was a Delchamps. The manager of the Thomasville store could not comment and calls to Southern Family Market's headquarters were not returned. Southern Family Markets and Norman Foods were the only two meat markets in Thomasville. With Southern Family's closure, Norman Foods will be the only meat market in town that can offer custom cuts and quantities. That's also an advantage Robbie and Mark Norman see for themselves over Wal-Mart, which has become the largest grocer in the nation. "We offer that customer service they can't," Robbie Norman said. Mark added that meat customers are forced into "whatever Bentonville, Ark. (Wal-Mart's headquarters) decides to do." The Norman brothers feel their store is in a good position, noting most of the pressure Wal-Mart puts on its competition is in the middle of the market. "The two kinds of stores you see still making it are the discounters and the specialty markets," Robbie Norman said. The regional chain supermarket has fallen victim to high rent prices for high traffic areas, the cost of corporate overhead, stocking for mass-market appeal and the brutal price cutting pressure of Wal-Mart. Smaller independent retailers operating away from the high-rent shopping centers and carefully catering to the tastes of their customers can help the smaller independents survive, the Normans said. Southern Family Markets purchased 104 stores from Bruno's parent company in 2005. Since that time, the company has been steadily closing stores, including a decision this summer to completely pull out of North Carolina, eliminating about 700 jobs.
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