By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Buying LakeVista Supervalu, the Saugatuck-Douglas area’s only full-service grocery store, seemed like Kismet for Pete Heinz and Darlene Bond.
“We’d been dating for about a year and loved visiting here,” Darlene recalls. “On July 23, 2003 — my 40th birthday — Pete proposed to me in Wicks Park by the riverfront.
“After all our years in the corporate grocery world and dreaming about running our own store, buying this one 22 years later just seemed like fate.”
The 237 Center St., Douglas market has long been an area institution. Oldtimers recall it as Taft’s before Gary Demond bought the store in 1991. He, then his sons, ran it as Demond’s Supervalu (Unified Supervalu is its main supplier), then LakeVista.
Brett Demond, its most recent proprietor, was 65 and planning to retire when he died suddenly Aug. 29 last year. But not before meeting and talking at length with Pete.
“Brett wanted it to remain a local family store,” says Pete, who began in the business bagging groceries for a Chicago-based Jewel store at age 16 and found he enjoyed the business. So much so earned a degree in food distribution from Western Michigan University and advanced through the corporate world, landing as Vice President of Strategy and Merchandising for Fresh Thyme Market, affiliated with Meijer Stores.
“Meijer blessed me with the opportunity to build and design six small-town groceries for them,” he said.
Darlene has skills and experience to complement and match. She grew up in St. Johns, graduated from Central Michigan University with a B.S. in business management, then also rose through the ranks with Meijer to become Fresh Thyme Director of Natural Living.
Pete is 65 now, Darlene 61. Between them they have four children.
The couple retired from the corporate world together in September 2023, whereupon Pete embarked on so many projects at their home on Scott Lake in Newaygo, “I think I drove Darlene crazy,” Pete says.
So she went back to work as a food broker for Critical Mass Group, a national food and sales management company, from which she resigned two weeks ago.
Pete signed a purchase agreement with Brett Demond last August, not long before Brett died.
“I’d been talking with him about buying the store since last February,” Pete remembers. “We’d chat by phone for hours; it was like he was interviewing me.
“I finally met him for the first time at the store in July, signed a purchase agreement the next month, then boom.”
“We were devastated,” says Brett’s daughter, Chelsea (Demond) Fish. “My husband, Jacob, me and our three kids had just moved into the old family home, which had gotten too big for Dad alone, in Fennville while he bought and moved into a new one 10 minutes away.
“I’m concerned people may think the rest of our family sold the store to the first buyer interested,” Chelsea goes on. “Not so at all. Dad had turned down offers from chains like Spartan and Harding’s because he wanted to keep it local. He’d picked Pete and Darlene.
“He knew they’d be good for our community,” she says.
The new buyers’ arrival and store redesign didn’t wait until this Monday’s closing. Pete and Darlene started are renting an apartment in town and supervising a remodeling that will include:
- A new floor and ceiling,
- Opening up the entry and placing new can and bottle recycling elsewhere,
- New interior design by Tylor Devereaux,
- Adding some 5,000 to 8,000 new items — especially naturaland organic foods — to LakeVista’s current inventory of 15,000 to 20,000 items. “We’re especially interested in local- and Michigan-grown and made foods,” Darlene says.
“We’ll stock and retain items based on community response,” Pete says.” Newness keeps you growing, makes the store fresher and interesting.”
Those and more are parts of Phase One, due for completion by March 15. Then will come five new check lanes, all human-run, fresh produce department, beverage cooler, beer cave, brighter lighting, expanding the dairy …
“Our vision is build a store where people want to shop,” Pete says.
How hard is that March 15 Phase ne deadline?
“Hard,” Pete says. “Then I plan to hike the Appalachian Trail, all 2,000 miles of it from Georgia to Maine.
“Brett has a great veteran staff here, led by manager Angie Camous,” he goes on. “They’re amazing.
“While I’m gone, Darlene and they will do fine,” he says.
