je grocery 139 reynolds street

There are certain things that are burned into a person’s memory, things that you might not think about for a very long time but all of a sudden show up in a dream or are triggered but something random. Today I thought about something I haven’t imagined for probably ten years. It was a grocery store I had never visited and yet its address is tattooed on a brain cell somewhere in the grainy trenches.

J&E Grocery was a store in Rochester, New York (my web research says it closed in 2001 after 37 years in operation), from all accounts an average small store with a focus on cheap specialty meats and canned goods. What makes the whole thing stick in my brain is the very low budget commercials they ran weekly on the local television stations. The commercial always featured the same mumbling guy in a butcher apron calling out the week’s specials. Ham hocks, fatback, and cow tongue along with Blue Boy succotash and creamed corn. At the end of the ad he would say something like “so come on down” to J&E Grocery, 139 (slight pause) Reynolds Street.

My brother and I would make fun of the commercials all the time, and it was impossible to say J&E Grocery without saying the full address. It was something about the guy’s voice in the commercial that made it impossible to separate it. There are many, many people that I know who grew up with these commercials as well as a handful of bloggers who have had the same observation. This was, in my opinion, a genius piece of marketing. This corner store with a limited advertising budget puts out these crappy ads with crappy pictures and with a guy you could barely understand, and here I am writing about it a million years later. Most businesses only dream about having that kind of marketing meme in place. When you said the name you had to say the address…

My brother and I made several parody videos around the J&E theme, purporting to sell everything from used ashtrays to meaty neck bones. I still have one of the parodies somewhere, on a VHS-C tape that also contains footage of me and him shaking the paw of a recently deceased woodchuck, making a claymation video to the song Spoonman and arguing about who was going to make the sandwiches on a particular day. My brother said “make yer own sammich” through a mouth stuck together with peanut butter. That became another J&E moment.

If you are from anywhere near the Rochester area and of my vintage, you will remember some great commercials from Jim “The Hammer” Shapiro, Joel Hyatt (“I’m Joel Hyatt, and you have my word on it), The Record Archive, Great House of Guitars, The Penny Arcade and Buzzo Music (watch Big B Buzzo eat corn)… Buzzo Buzzo Buzzo. And of course J&E. Let me know if you remember any of these…