Customers who visit Hy-Vee Food Store will probably notice a change in the produce section.

Thursday, January 18, 2001

Customers who visit Hy-Vee Food Store will probably notice a change in the produce section. The store has expanded the Hispanic food section and placed it near the back of the produce aisle, giving a growing section of the community a greater selection of foods they previously found in limited amounts in the store.

"Before we had a marginal small selection of authentic Hispanic products," said Store Manager Paul Boisjolie. Whereas the previous section encompassed four feet of an aisle, the newly expanded section covers 32-feet of space.

Boisjolie said that Hy-Vee has carried canned native Hispanic products for quite some time, but now they have added more canned foods, plus meats and cheeses.

He said that he would not have known which direction to expand the section without the input of Liliana Silvestry from The Welcome Center and several Hispanic employees of Hy-Vee.

"People have told me ‘Now you’ve got 95 percent of what people want and buy day to day,’" Boisjolie said.

Maria Acosta of The Welcome Center said that the new selection has "really gotten a lot better" at Hy-Vee. She said that they carry items such as certain spices and tortillas that Hispanic people in Austin expect to find when they shop for groceries.

"There’s a lot of difference between Old El Paso and the native products which we buy," Boisjoli said. The native Hispanic products Hy-Vee stocks come from distribution companies in three U.S. cities: Chicago, Ill.; Omaha, Neb.; and Des Moines, Iowa.

Boisjolie chose to place the products in the produce aisle because, he said, Hispanic people purchase a large amount of fruits and vegetables.

"Blocking the items together makes it easy for people to shop," he said.

From what Boisjolie has learned from the Hispanic people he now knows, eating together as a family is very important to them.

 

"They live as I used to 20 years ago – eating at the table with my family. I think that is actually a better way."

Because of this familial eating tradition, many Hispanic customers expect to buy products in bulk to accommodate their families. Hy-Vee now stocks large quantities packaged together of dried tortillas and hot sauces, as well as institutional-sized cans of many products, from cactus to jalapenos.

Acosta said that the one way in which local grocery stores can still improve would be to offer more meats Hispanic people are accustomed to, including fajitas, pig’s feet and liver.

Boisjolie said that Hy-Vee is always open to input and will continue to add more products in order to bring a taste of home to more tables in Austin.

"We try to take care of all of our customers," said Boisjolie. "We haven’t done as good of a job as we would have liked to before this. But now I think we’re really starting to get on the ball."