Business 00k ewish Living In Metropolitan Detroit The most popular Cattleman's Closes Its Oak Park Store N BILL CARROLL Special to The Jewish News Your SourceBook is chock full of interesting information, like this "Detroit Detail." Check out your copy... and see what you're missing! To order a SourceBook for We can handle eve and they hove some cloy send. on most presalphons , s really cool BUY DIRECT & SAVE! EVERYDAY! rr EYEGLASSES 1 EYEGLASSES 1 I COMPLETE 1 1 I $29 I 57 - 1 WITH NO-LINE PROGRESSIVE BIFOCALS OVER 1000 FRAMES I I $ 79 57 TO CHOOSE FROM! 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They're now hoping that a new food business will preserve the shopping continuity in the Oak Park Plaza at Coolidge Highway and Nine Mile Road. Only two retail stores — on Mack Avenue in Detroit and on Telegraph Road in Taylor — and a meat process- ing plant now remain in the Cattleman's operation, founded in 1972 by Markus Rohtbart. His son, David, president of the firm, said the Oak Park store closing was a "business decision based purely on lack of volume and nothing else." Low prices and specialty items were not enough of a draw. A Cattleman's store in Farmington closed two years ago, several months after authorities linked bacteria ema- nating from an allegedly faulty rooftop air conditioning system to some deaths in the community caused by Legionaire's disease. A few civil law- suits by the families against Cattleman's still are pending and are "being handled by our insurance com- pany," said David Rohtbart. He said the Oak Park store had been producing only about 5 percent of the total volume in the Cattleman's chain recently, apparently because the Jewish and Chaldean people, who had been the majority of the store's cus- tomers, "just stopped shopping there. It's a changing market area. We con- tinued to run specials, and we tried our best to keep prices down, but our customer base dwindled to a point where it was no longer profitable to keep that store open. "The fruit and vegetable business always has had a thin profit margin anyway," Rohtbart explained. "Produce is very expensive and you have to price it accordingly. Fruits ands vegetables must be fresh every day ... and you need good buyers to select the best merchandise. Meat prices also have risen. You have to maintain a high sales volume or you just can't stay in business in a neighborhood store today." Cattleman's bought the Oak Park store five years ago from Oak Farms Produce, and had enjoyed a reputation of having low prices and specialty foods, besides being convenient for older shoppers. There always was a large produce display, and meats were kept in a huge refrigerated walk-in room. "Closing before Thanksgiving, Christmas and Chanukah was no big loss," said Rohtbart. "It's a myth that these holidays are good for the food business, especially Thanksgiving. I was paying 69 cents per pound for turkeys and I had to be competitive and sell them for 29 or 39 cents per pound to keep up with specials at other markets. The same goes for most of the other fresh food lines. Lettuce and tomatoes are especially expensive this time of year, and we were losing money on them. "Christmas and Chanukah are great holidays for toys and clothes, but not very profitable for food sales. We felt it just wasn't worth keeping the store open past November." Another reason for closing the store, Rohtbart offered, was to stream- line the Cattleman's chain and make it easier for him and his father to oper- ate. "We feel that meat is the most important part of our business any- way, and we want to focus on that as our core business," he said. The firm has a meat processing plant at the Eastern Market in Detroit, where approximately two mil- lion pounds of beef are processed each ci week and sold to wholesale meat com- panies around the world. Most of the Oak Park store's 33 full-time and 10 part-time employees lost their jobs when it closed. Only some were able to get jobs at the other Cattleman's stores. Although Rohtbart said all were given two weeks' notice, one employee, who preferred not to be identified, said she didn't know about the closing until a window sign was posted several days before the last weekend, announcing a store closinc, sale." Most of the stock was liquidated ar a 50 percent dis- count to customers. "Most of us were pretty much sur- prised when we heard the store was CC