Anderson’s Market celebrates 30 years in Glen Arbor

From staff reports

Anderson’s Market is preparing to celebrate its 30th anniversary since Brad Anderson acquired “Steffen’s IGA” from Bill and Jen Heston in 1994. The grocery store will host a party in the parking lot on Sunday, May 19, from 2-5 pm and provide local beer from Short’s, homemade pulled pork sandwiches and bratwursts, Moomer’s Ice Cream, and live music — all while supplies last.

Anderson was a youthful 27 years old when he bought the IGA in 1994 and renamed it Anderson’s Market. Bit by bit he updated the interior and modernized the inventory, and in 2014 the grocery store in the heart of Glen Arbor got a complete facelift, including an attractive, four-season entrance with a tower, a skylight above the new deli that introduces natural light and enhances the shopping experience, and a 3,000-square foot increase in the market’s size.

Anderson also expanded the store’s inventory to include more local and seasonal produce, organic and specialty foods, a full service deli, butcher shop, craft beers and ciders, and one of Leelanau County’s largest wine selections. “We have always embraced locally made and grown products, and we are excited to bring even more of these special items to our customers,” said Anderson in 2014. The market will also continue to offer all the food and dry good necessities for stocking the home or cottage pantry.

In the past decade, as Leelanau’s labor shortage has grown more acute, Anderson’s Market became an early adopter of self-checkout lanes and also embraced the H-2B and J-1 temporary guest worker program, which has brought employees from the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Asia to Glen Arbor in the summertime. Anderson teamed up with Cherry Republic to acquire a house on Trumbull Road near Maple City, and also a townhouse at Sugar Loaf, where guest workers can stay for $100 per week.

Anderson said that fees associated with paying the federal government, bringing the guest workers to Michigan, and transporting them between their home and Glen Arbor amounts to “quite an investment. But it’s joy to have them here. They are people in school [in their home countries], they work hard, they appreciate the opportunity. … And people [in Leelanau County] love having more culture in the area.”

This year Anderson’s plans to import 10 workers on temporary J-1 visas and five on H-2B visas. Some have already begun to arrive. In addition to workers returning from Jamaica, the grocery store will have employees from China, Mongolia, and Jordan.

“We want to make a t-shirt with the flags of all the countries they’re from, and offer those as a way to celebrate them,” said Anderson.

Reflecting on 30 years of owning the grocery store, Anderson conceded that some times have been chaotic and challenging. In particular, the August 2015 megastorm that pummeled Glen Arbor during the height of the tourism season and knocked out electricity for a week, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the store was mandated to stay open — as an essential business — even as most Michigan businesses closed down in March 2020.

“It’s been a joy to serve the community,” he said. “I’m proud of the way our team handled the straight-line wind storm [in 2015]. We opened the day after the storm and brought in a diesel generator. We had these 20-gallon jugs of diesel fuel that I had to keep dumping in there for five days, starting at 5 in the morning, until the electricity turned back on. I smelled like diesel that whole week!”