After walking into Seven Mile Market on Sunday, January 20, I asked a cashier if I could borrow a pen. It wasn’t to write a check but to capture what was going on at Seven Mile’s Customer Appreciation and 30th Anniversary Event. While winds blew wildly outside, on one of the coldest days of the year, inside, the warmth among the customers, management, and product demonstrators was worth recording.
The store was filled with the joy that comes from sharing a simcha. “This isn’t a day to shop but a day to have fun,” said one customer. Adults and children walked from table to table sampling the many varieties of food being offered. Although some people with carts were actually shopping and experienced a few “traffic jams,” no one pushed, not even the children with chocolate and vanilla ice cream on their cheeks and noses.
“Baruch Hashem,” said one woman, who finally got her cart past the crowd. Then she smiled. Almost everyone was smiling or laughing, including the managers, who had worked hard preparing for this event.
Moshe Boehm, son of Seven Mile’s owner Hershel Boehm and grandson of beloved grocers Jack and Rose Boehm, a”h, who opened the family grocery, Jack’s, in 1953 in Lower Park Heights near the old Shaarei Zion, reminisced about earlier events. Every year, from 1988 to 2010, when Seven Mile Market was next door to where it stands now, they held a sale for their customer appreciation event. In 2011, after they moved, they added a raffle. The next year, they hired a balloon man, and the year after that, they brought in an ice cream man. “Every year it was better and better,” said Moshe, vice-president of the store.
This year included all those additions and more. Planning started two to three months ago. Dovid Goldberg, dairy frozen manager, and others in the administrative office were responsible for contacting vendors and their product demonstrators, accepting the supplies they sent ahead, asking what they needed, such as tables and electricity, and taking care of a myriad details.
“They spent weeks and weeks, days and days, planning,” said Moshe. Then, on motzei Shabbos, Boehm, along with Goldberg; Aaron Paige, manager of deliveries; and Yaakov Nelkin, plant manager,worked from 8 to 11:30 setting up the store according to the graph Goldberg and the others had prepared. They took down displays and hauled them off the floor, set up the tables, and made sure there was room between them for the crowd they hoped and prayed would come.
They weren’t disappointed. Starting on Sunday at 1 p.m., customers parked their cars in Seven Mile’s spacious lot and came in to celebrate. One of the store’s managers had to park on Reisterstown Road. “If we had more parking spaces, more people could have come,” said Goldberg.
The celebration included sales on meat and other items as well as free samples of dairy and parve food from the product demonstrators. These included Golden Taste Food Company dips, demonstrated by popular food expert Sarah Masry assisted by Miriam Leah Schwartz of Baltimore; breaded fish sticks; eggplant; falafel balls; cheeses; and both Mehadrin and Sprinkles ice creams.
Other demonstrators stood behind tables promoting their products and generously offering free food. Chanie Engel – a product demonstrator who works in New York supermarkets – represented Shindler’s and B’gan at Seven Mile’s show and helped set up the table for Reisman’s pastries. With 10 years of experience behind her, Chani Engel has become prominent in the field. One new product demonstrator at the Seven Mile event said that Chanie is her mentor. “It isn’t just years of doing this that makes others look up to her. She really cares about her work and she likes to help others, whether the companies she works for or fledgling demonstrators.”
Explaining the presence of two ice cream companies at the same event – almost next to each other – Engel said that there was “no feeling of competition” here. She raved about the hospitality of the management, saying, “Seven Mile Market puts together an amazing show.”
Amazing could also describe what some of the presenters went through to come to Baltimore. The Sprinkles representative drove from New York with a huge ice cream machine, set it up, and stood for hours handing out mini-cones topped with colorful sprinkles. Dozens and dozens of children (and even some adults) stood patiently in line to taste this special soft ice cream treat.
Product demonstrator Brocha Kimmel stood behind a table handing out varieties of Norman’s chalav Yisrael yogurt and prizes. “If you say a bracha, you’ll win a prize,” Kimmel told the children. She later explained that it’s her shtick – “because it makes the parents happy.”
Kimmel became a product demonstrator four years ago when her sister-in-law Dena Tocker, who was working at the Seven Mile event for Gevina Farms, asked that she join her at New York’s Pomegranate supermarket for their wine and dip tasting party. Someone there took down Kimmel’s name and number. After that,several kosher food companies recruited her before she became Norman’s East Coast product demonstrator.
“The Seven Mile event was very well organized,” said Kimmel. “Everything was set up for us, and it was inspiring that Dovid Goldberg kept coming over to ask if we needed anything. Not only did they appreciate the customers, they appreciated the companies’ product demonstrators.”
In the produce section, young children and their parents pushing strollers formed a line from the potatoes at the back of the store to the bananas in the front. The children were waiting to greet the balloon man and answer his request to choose a shape for him to create – right before their eyes. Every once in a while, popping balloons, sounding like fireworks, were heard throughout the store. “Isn’t this wild!’ one woman said and laughed.
At the back of the store, near the meat and poultry section, Aaron Paige directed customers to the left and around the bend. “Don’t miss the raffle table, and in aisle 10 you can see some of the prizes,” he said.
The prizes included bikes, crates of chips and other food, and, this year, a complete Shabbos six-course dinner for six! Adults and children (mostly) stood in front of the table waiting their turn to write their names and phone numbers on white slips of paper and drop them into the boxes. Mrs. Schwab, who often fills delivery orders at the store, sat behind the table. This time, she filled a bowl with dozens of small bags of cookies. To her left sat a young man with long, black, curly payos and a broad smile. He was typing names and emails of customers who wanted to enter the raffle for the Shabbos meals.
Close by, Pride of the Farm offered drinkable yogurts, Rosendorf’s bakery gave out burekas, and the prepared food counter offered half off on all showcase items, including Captain Crunch Chicken.
The event lasted until 4 p.m., when the customers took the children (and maybe some Captain Crunch for dinner) home, the vendors packed up, and the managers went back to business as usual.
“It was tons of effort, and in the end it worked out beautifully,” said Goldberg. “It was Seven Mile’s chance to give back to the community.”
“It was an unbelievable turnout,” said Moshe Boehm, who particularly wanted the children to have fun.
They did. So did the adults. But it was more than a fun day. It was a day of achdus, appreciation, and sharing a simcha.
Happy anniversary, Seven Mile, and many more!
