April 30, 2019
Old Jim Hogg building razed
Amber Hornbeck
The following stories on the closing of Jim Hogg's Supermarket ran in the January 5, 1997 edition of the Daily American Republic
Decades Of Service To End For Hogg Family
By LONNIE THIELE, DAR Staff Writer
POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. — After 115 years of there being a member of the Hogg family in a retail grocery business in Poplar Bluff, and after 63 years at the present location at Jim Hogg's Super Market at 842 Pine St., the popular family-owned grocery store is closing.
Present co-owners Bill Hogg and his children Jim Hogg and Susan Hoxworth and their families made the decision to sell a few weeks ago.
Their decision was based on Bill Hogg, Jim Hogg and Susan Hoxworth wanting to go their separate ways.
Bill Hogg will be 77 in February and wants to retire and travel. Jim Hogg plans to concentrate on the Hickory Hogg's BBQ Restaurant, and Susan Hoxworth wants to pursue personal interests.
"We're letting the inventory run down, selling everything out," Susan Hoxworth said. "When it's gone, we'll shut the doors."
"Business has been good. It's just the family has taken different directions," Jim Hogg said.
"I've enjoyed it for years," Bill Hogg said. "But I'm getting tired. When you have a family business, you don't retire."
"We toyed with the decision for some time," Bill Hogg said. "It was a hard decision _ we've made so many friends and acquaintances."
"They're not only our customers, they're our friends," Jim Hogg added.
On Wednesday, the three told the store's 15 employees of their decision.
In 1873, eight years after the Civil War ended, Marion Hogg (Bill's great-grandfather), after settling near Poplar Bluff from Indiana, started a butcher business with his son, James Robert Hogg.
The business expanded to a grocery store in Poplar Bluff in 1882.
Over the years the Hogg family, the grocery business, and Poplar Bluff became synonymous.
Since 1882 over a dozen of James Robert Hogg's descendants have owned 10 different grocery stores within Poplar Bluff.
The original part of the present store building at Ninth and Pine streets was purchased by Bill Hogg's parents, James B. and Mae Hogg, in August 1934.
Bill and Jim Hogg and Susan Hoxworth have all worked at the same grocery business all of their lives. "Since we were born," Hoxworth said.
Officially the three all started working at the grocery in their teen-age years. Bill Hogg started as a clerk in 1934 at the age of 14. Jim Hogg started as a bottle sorter at the age of 13 in 1968, and Susan Hoxworth started as a checker when she was 14 in 1966.
The three, father, son and daughter, have worked together at the store for the past 30 years, six days a week, up to 14 hours per day. "A good week was 65 hours," Susan Hoxworth said. "A bad week was 80 hours."
Since 1934, there have been eight additions made to the store, each time extending the building further south. The last addition was made in the mid-1980s.
After running out of extension room at the grocery, the business expanded to the restaurant just east of the grocery, which opened in 1995.
The restaurant will continue to be owned by the Hogg family with Jim Hogg managing it. "I really enjoy the restaurant and want to stay in the restaurant business," Jim Hogg said.
Although all three know the different jobs of running a grocery store, Hoxworth has concentrated on the bookkeeping, Jim Hogg does most of the buying, and Bill Hogg still does stocking and shelving. "We all do it a little bit of everything," Hoxworth said.
Their spouses have also been involved in the grocery. Virginia Hogg, Bill's wife, is now retired but worked at the store for many years. Karen Hogg, Jim's wife, now teaches and previously worked at the store; and Susan's husband, Randy Hoxworth, worked at the store for 20 years before retiring due to health problems.
As a family-owned business, Jim Hogg's Supermarket has offered customers their own unique style of service.
In the 1930's customers merely had to walk to the counter and place their grocery order and a clerk at the store would go and get the groceries for them.
For years they offered a delivery service and walked groceries to the homes of people who lived close to the store.
The store has offered carryout service ever since it opened.
Their meat has always had a good reputation, and customers received special cuts. "We're hearing a lot of people say, `where are we going to get our meat?' " Hoxworth said.
Hundreds of people over the years have used the store as a bank, cashing their checks at the store's office section. "We've always cashed checks for our customers," Jim Hogg said.
They still fill orders for delivery by cab for elderly and shut-in people daily.
"If it needed to be done, we did it," Bill Hogg said.
Hogg Family Always Went The Extra Mile
By LONNIE THIELE
DAR Staff Writer
The announcement of the closing of Jim Hogg's Super Market has affected hundreds of people in the area of Ninth and Pine streets and beyond, many who have shopped at the store since it opened 63 years ago.
"My family has traded there since it opened in the mid-1930s," C.W. Knuckles said. "I started trading there after the war on my own in 1951 and have been trading there ever since. I'll miss it very much."
Knuckles said when he first learned the store was closing it was like "a bomb dropped on me."
"I'm just so disappointed (at the store's closing). I've gone there all of my married life _ 50 years," Pauline Hearne said. "Bill Hogg and I were in the same class and finished Poplar Bluff High School together in 1937.
"Bill is outgoing as a person and likes to visit with all of the people at the store. He kept a log of all the graduates in our class and had a way of keeping everybody together. He's a very special person.
"The boys (who work at the store) always carry out your groceries, put them in your car and wish you a nice day. That's unheard of anywhere else."
Although a lot of the supermarket's customers are local, the business also drew customers out of the neighborhood. Tom Allen, who lives several blocks away, said he had been trading at Jim Hogg's Supermarket since 1958. When asked what kept him going back he said, "Because of the family. They're home folks and treat everybody with a lot of courtesy and dignity. I'm very close to that family."
Thadis Seifert, who lives several blocks away, has also continued to shop there over the years. "My family shopped there when they first opened up, and I've shopped there all of my life," Seifert said. "I'm going to miss it, that's for sure."
Seifert, 78, said in 1935-36 as a young boy he worked at the store while in high school. "I helped put merchandise on the shelves.
"When I was a senior, on Saturday's I used (Bill's father) Jim Hogg's car and delivered groceries to customers, starting at 7 a.m., and I would leave between 7 and 8 p.m. He was very nice to work for and his wife also. Around 10 a.m. I would go pick up Mae Hogg (Jim's wife), and she'd help out at the store."
Jim Hogg's Super Market has employed hundreds of teenagers over the years. For many it was their first employment.
Joe Jordan, advertising director for the Daily American Republic said he worked at the store during his junior and senior years under the school's Cooperative Occupational Education (C.O.E.) program.
"It was really a neat place to work," Jordan said. "I carried groceries and stocked shelves. There were always two or three generations of families shopping there. Bill and Virginia always knew everybody by name.
"I wish every kid that enters the job market for the first time could work for someone like Bill Hogg. He would personally explain how to do things, and you'd better have an idea what you planned to do with your life because he would come around and ask you. He always knew if you'd been goofing off in school too."
Brothers Laddie and Larry Cross, who grew up near the store, worked there while they were in high school and college.
Laddie Cross, executive vice president at Mercantile Bank, said, "I was 16 when I started. We lived in the house next door to the store. They were good friends. It was a great place to work. I was honored to be one of the first boys to be a checker. Back then only grown women were checkers."
Larry Cross, a CPA for Kraft, Miles & Tatum, said he worked at the supermarket from the time he was 16 to age 22. "I stocked, carried out, checked, about everything," Larry Cross said. "It was great. Bill's a great guy, and he and Ernest Hammons both emphasized courtesy to the customers and trying to satisfy their needs and desires.
"We use to walk groceries to the homes of people in the area. They also had a truck that delivered groceries."
Bill Hogg, Jim Hogg and Susan Hoxworth will be remembered for the unique way they worked together as a family at the store and for stopping at a moment's notice to go respond to a customer's request. Often they did more.
"A couple of months ago I had a knee problem and called in my grocery order and told them I'd have someone pick it up," Pauline Hearne said.
"Bill said, `No problem _ I'll bring them to you on my way to lunch.' They always went the extra mile."
Donna Farley, Associate Editor, contributed to the compilation of archival information contained in the story.
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