McNear’s Saloon & Dining House AND General Store
These days businesses are having to come up with creative ways to keep the lights on and employees paid. We now are no longer worried about how much profit we make, rather, our focus is on being able to afford to pay more people. With the Covid-19 shutdown, sales have dropped dramatically but we refuse to let our staff go. True, they are laid off but not let go.
McNear’s General Store Is Born
Early on I foolishly thought we would be able to use this time to get some projects done around the restaurant and cleaning out some “storage” (more like “stuffage”) areas. Between re-tooling the business for take-out, having to work on the floor to keep costs down, and wanting to spend more time at home, these projects were slow to get going. One of the things that I saw that could be done was for us to go through the mountains of glassware that we no longer use and offer it up for sale. You never know, right? But with the work to be done on the front-end of the business, this was put on the back-burner.
I am not the grocery shopper of the family. I absolutely HATE going to the grocery store but fortunately, my husband, Ken, loves it. He had been reporting to me what was hard to find and we would talk about how, if this situation is going to last a while, we might think about ordering some supplies for our large family from our restaurant purveyors. Ken then suggested that we follow our niece’s lead and start selling groceries. (Jennifer O’Donnell runs her own restaurant in Arizona and has been filling grocery orders since the very beginning with great success.) I pointed out that the veranda, with its accordion-style windows, would be the perfect place for that. I thought we could sell lots of things, not just groceries (thinking of those space-invading glasses!). The general store was born!
McNear’s One-Stop Shopping: Add Groceries To Your Next Order At McNear’s
Unlike a full grocery store, the McNear’s mercantile clearly can’t carry everything but we do have staples and things you may need to get you by. We also may have access to things that you can’t find in your local grocery store! You can find flour, eggs, milk, yeast, some fruits & veggies, dried goods like beans and rice, etc. Of course, there’s also the beer, wine & spirits that we offer. You will still need to buy prepared food in order to purchase these things but we do serve a lovely hard-boiled egg…
It’s our thought that it might make life easier for our customers (and give us a chance to put one more person to work!) if they could pick up a few things for their fridge or pantry while picking up dinner, without having to make another stop and interact with more people. It might make things easier. Groceries can also be added to brunch and dinner orders and brought to you by the great people of The Petaluma Food Taxi! I don’t know about you, but getting dinner, groceries AND a chilled manhattan delivered to me at home sounds like a winning trifecta to me!
You can also order online from our website or call in your order. Just please make sure, if you are calling in, that you are not asking us prices on items as this could tie up our phone lines and we only have two! The complete list of items are available on the website under General Store.
Our Valued Partners
We are working with many purveyors to bring you fresh, local, high-quality products. Many of our vegetables come to us from locally owned and operated sellers such as Palace of Fruit, Pear Tree Produce and Clover Stornetta. As we add local products, we will let you know!
Tell Us What You Want!
Since we have never done this, we’re kind of flying by the seat of our pants! We are starting out by selling the things we already have. This lessens our investment in the endeavor before we know if it’s even going to fly. But we really want to know what our customers want! Feel free to email us at [email protected] or send a message on Facebook. We are happy to fill custom orders, if feasible, and will surely consider feedback when deciding on our regular supply so please speak up!
Until next time!
Carrie O’Donnell