Family and community are at the center of Stinebrink’s Piggly Wiggly, which is based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Local involvement begins at the store level and continues up to Stinebrink’s president, Matt Stinebrink.
Stinebrink owns the company in partnership with his brother, David, and cousins, Tim, Ben and Todd. David’s wife, Kathy, is the company’s chief marketing officer.
Stinebrink’s was begun in 1974 by grandfather Edward and his sons, Mark and Brett.
Not long after opening as a Certified Foods grocery store, the name was changed to Super Value, Stinebrink said. In 1981, Roundy’s grocery chain offered the owners a chance to run a new store in Lake Geneva under a Pick N’ Save banner.
That Pick N’ Save building still stands today as Piggly Wiggly Lake Geneva. In 1990, the family purchased another Pick N’ Save operation in Delavan, Wisconsin. The Stinebrinks didn’t join the Piggly Wiggly family until 2008. The change came about when the owners of the Pick N’ Save brand decided they wanted to go in a “more corporate direction.” The Stinebrink family wanted to keep the family-owned business independent.
“We started looking at different warehouses and Piggly Wiggly became the best fit for our family,” Stinebrink said.
Since joining Piggly Wiggly, the company has opened two more stores, both in Kenosha, Wisconsin, with the most recent in 2019. There are no plans to further expand, though Stinebrink added “you never know what the future holds.”
Community remains most important to Stinebrink’s Piggly Wiggly. The company partners with many local vendors to get some exclusive and hard-to-acquire products. For example, it works with a cheesemaker and a local brewery to carry their respective products.
One of the more unique ways the Stinebrinks connect with customers is through their Facebook bourbon club, Kathy Stinebrink said. Their stores have an “extensive” liquor inventory.
She said they wanted to capitalize on the ongoing bourbon craze. And it really helps those who are enthusiastic about bourbon and others who are just looking for a simple way to find it.
“There’s some specific bottles that are really hard to get,” she said. “People will buy up your whole inventory and then go sell on the secondary market. So, we created a space where we could make sure our customers are getting these hard-to-find bottles.
“We’ll announce that we have something, and they can claim or put a hold on their bottle for a week. That’s been well received and it’s a great way to make sure [bottles] get into the hands of our customers and not just secondary sellers.”
But the more than 1,000-member Facebook group extends past liquor, offering information on wines, beers and events the company hosts.
“Matt does one with his buddy called ‘Fatts and Fausto’s 12 days of Wines of Christmas’… and then also any kind of beer. We’ve done some things with a company called MobCraft Beer out of Milwaukee and they make custom beers,” she said.
Just recently, Stinebrink’s and MobCraft conducted a community poll for four different custom beers, with the winner becoming an exclusive store product for the summer.
Alongside the exclusive beers, David Stinebrink said the company has 13 different single barrel bourbon picks exclusive to its Piggly Wigglys. In fact, the Stinebrinks travel to Kentucky, Tennessee and parts of Wisconsin to find the barrels and decide which to carry.
They also take these collaborations and exclusivity a step forward. They have a partnership with a local cheesemaker that provides two exclusive cheeses to the stores. Both are aged in one of the single barrel bourbon picks the company has from a distillery in Wisconsin, Kathy Stinebrink said.
Their cheesemonger turns the products into an exclusive bourbon cheddar and a bourbon gouda, soaking them in bourbon and providing them to the stores to sell in the deli.
But the connection between Stinebrink’s Piggly Wiggly and the community at large goes well beyond the stores. Kathy Stinebrink specifically mentioned involvement with the Lake Geneva Junior Chamber, commonly known as the Jaycees, a civic organization focused on developing young adults. In fact, Matt Stinebrink is a past president of a local chapter.
The company also works with Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Central Wisconsin. Stinebrink’s puts together an annual golf outing for both organizations.
“It’s just about supporting people that support us,” Kathy Stinebrink said.
Supporting youth is a company priority. Representatives from the company attend the Walworth County Fair every year to participate in the Meat Animal Sale, which is made up of children in the 4-H and FFA programs. The company will buy animals, with the funds generally going toward college education or other things the kids may need.
Stinebrink’s also hosts an annual Easter egg hunt at its stores for children 5 and younger. Hundreds of plastic eggs are hidden throughout the stores, and participants can cash them in for prizes depending on the number they find.
The company’s largest community involvement comes from its Thanksgiving meal donation drive, Matt Stinebrink said. Customers donate money toward providing holiday meals for local food pantries. Every $35 is another meal made. Last year, more than 200 meals were donated from one store.
For more information, visit facebook.com/stinebrinkspigglywiggly or pigglywiggly.net.
