Steve Dillman said he kept the family grocery store open as long as possible.
But since 2000, sales have dropped by half, while expenses have doubled, a recipe for closing, he said. So the Dillman family, which has been in the grocery business for 87 years in Middletown, is closing its final store on Central Avenue. Dillman, 61, said the store will close between Tuesday to Jan. 4, 2014, depending on how fast the products sell during the inventory reduction sale.
“I never thought this would happen,” said Dillman, a third-generation grocer. “I’m frustrated, no make that sad. I always think what could I have done differently.”
The closing of Dillman Food is the latest loss of a family owned grocery store in Middletown, joining the casualties of McGee’s, Davey’s Carry-Out and Kelly’s Market.
Dillman called his 51 years on Central Avenue “a wonderful run, a real pleasure.” He thanked those in the community who supported his business.
He’s negotiating to sell the building, though he refused to name the potential owner. He said it will be a retail business, but not a grocery store.
He thought about closing the store in 2012, but wanted to see if sales improved. Instead, there was “a huge decline.”
Then he added: “It went the wrong way.”
For the last year or so, he has dumped “buckets of cash” into the business, he said. He doesn’t want to lose all the money he has made over the years. He compared it to a gambler knowing when to cash in his chips and walk away from the table when he’s ahead.
In the last five months, Dillman said, the “bottom fell out” of his business. He said other business owners in Middletown have seen the same downward trend.
“It’s bigger than me,” he said.
He pointed to several reasons for closing the store from dwindling sales to competition from the dollar stores and drug stores, to increased crime and growing Section 8 housing in the city. Middletown, he said, isn’t the same city it was decades ago.
Dillman said the stiffest competition doesn’t come from Kroger, Meijer and Walmart. The store has survived against the major retailers, but he said the smaller stores, those that sell what he called “easier items” at or below cost, have impacted his bottom line.
Also, he said, during an 18-month period, between 2010 to 2011, there were three armed robberies in the stores: two at Dillman’s on Central Avenue and one at Save-A-Lot on Roosevelt Boulevard. In the previous 20 years, he said, there were no robberies in the stores.
He called the robberies, when his employees had guns pointed at their heads, “eye opening” and that’s when “everything changed.”
To combat the crime, Dillman purchased surveillance cameras that he monitors from his tiny office, and he hired an armed security guard who works at night. He said the guard has stopped two potential robberies, and on numerous occasions, people walked into the store, spotted the guard, and left the store without making a purchase.
Dillman said since the robberies, business at night has dropped off significantly.
At the height of the family’s business, the Dillmans owned three grocery stores in Middletown and one in West Carrollton. They converted two of the Middletown locations — the ones on Roosevelt Boulevard and University Boulevard — into Save-A-Lots, then sold them in 2011.
Dillman said it bothers him that he was unable to turn the store around. Now, he said, his employees — he called them “co-workers” — many of them with the company for decades, will have to find work elsewhere or retire.
One of those is Connie Lacy, the deli manager who has worked at Dillman for 22 years, nearly half of her life. As she discussed her career, she choked back tears.
“Sorry,” she said. “I get emotional.”
She said Steve Dillman made the business “feel like a family. It was work, but it was more than just a job. I will miss it.”
Dillman, an only child, said closing the store will afford him more time to care for his parents, Roger, 88, and Virginia, 85. He took another glance at the surveillance cameras and added: “It’s time for a new life.”