Mark Reid bids farewell to Valu-mart

After 23 years of owning Reid’s Valu-mart, Mark Reid has recently retired. However, his history with the store goes back even further.

Reid’s father, Garnet, owned the grocery store for 16 years. The store had previously been a Dominion store, where Garnet had been manager. When the store closed, he bought it. At that same time, Reid started working alongside his father when he was just 18, taking on the role of store manager.

When Garnet stepped away, Mark Reid bought it from him, officially turning Garnet’s Valu-mart into Reid’s in 2002.

Throughout that time Reid saw many changes. “We went from pricing with stickers on cans to scanning.” As well, debit machines were added and instead of making manual orders to wholesalers they moved toward “auto replenishment.”

Reid was also witness to having the stock and variety of items triple, especially when the hot food counter was introduced. Despite these changes, “at the end of it, the business stayed the same.”

Reid was originally set to retire in 2021, but when COVID hit he realized he couldn’t leave his staff and customers behind.

“(Customers) had faith in me that I was doing what I needed to do to be safe. That was a comfort going through the nightmare that at least people trusted (me), and it also came with a huge responsibility to make sure that you’re doing everything that you can with all the information you could gather. It was something I wouldn’t wish on anybody to go through again,” he said.

Those days were marked with plexi-glass being installed at the cashes, arrows pasted to floors to direct the flow of customers, and limits set on the number of customers allowed in the store at the same time. There were days where he would have to pay $180 for a 26-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer.

“We’ve seen the best of human nature and the worst of human nature throughout those things, as you always do in chaotic times. For the large part, it was nice to be in a small town, because you really got the sense of the community support and the faith that they had in you,” said Reid.

He also thinks to the blackout of 2003 and how it would have been a disaster without his staff.

“I had people that worked 72 hours by my side, making sure that we got everything out in refrigerated trucks and got everything safe.” In March, he had a similar experience with the ice storm where staff worked with him to save as much product as they could.

Now, reflecting on his time at Valu-mart he thinks of the staff that he’s used to seeing every day, with some having worked alongside him since 1984. “The staff is the biggest thing for Leanne and I to adjust to (not seeing) because we spent as much time with them over the last 23 years as we did with our families, sometimes more,” said Reid.

Reid and his wife, Leanne, are looking forward to now being able to just sit back and relax, with plans to spend more time at their cottage fishing and hunting. “Christmas (was) a whole new experience,” said Reid. Historically he would work for seven days straight up to Christmas, just a day and a half off and then work another five days in the lead up to New Year’s. “It’s quite different to be at home and thinking about all the different things that we can do, participating in a lot more family functions and being around for family.”

As this chapter in life comes to a close, Reid is thankful for all of the support he’s received over the years. “It’s just been a privilege and an absolute honour to have run the business for 40 years and interact with all the people…. that’s what I’m going to miss the most, is the interaction between the customers and the employees and their loyalty.”