Page Title

Chanhassen * 952-934-5659

Leuthner Well Company

Victoria * 952-443-2582

Laser and Electrolysis

Chanhassen 952-474-7474

Dine in Downtown Victoria * 952-443-2858

MACKENTHUN’S Gourmet Meats

Victoria * 952-443-1841

St. Bonifacius * 952-446-1338

Holy Family Catholic High School

Victoria * 952-443-4659

by Sue Orsen

Victoria’s first grocery store was built in 1898. The store motto was, “Everything to Eat and Wear.” Victoria’s second grocery store was built in 2009, more than one hundred years later. The new store motto could easily be, “Everything to Eat and More.” Clothing disappeared from general grocery stores over the decades, but only gradually.

At Victoria’s first grocery store, eggs and butter were big business for at least the first 20 years, because there wasn’t a Creamery in town at that time. The store was initially called “Diethelm and Notermann.” Regular groceries included large bags of staples like sugar and flour, salt and spices, and special items like oranges for the Christmas stocking. The store also sold furniture, clothing (including ready-made dresses and ladies’ undergarments), shoes, sewing materials, and diamond rings, even containing a bicycle repair shop and patent medicines.

At Victoria’s second grocery store, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, fresh meat, fresh fish, and fresh bread are big business for the store, which is fittingly called Fresh Seasons Market and wears well the motto: “A Fresh Approach to Value.” Their groceries also include canned, frozen, and prepackaged foods of all kinds for modern families. It houses a bakery, a deli, coffee shop, sushi bar, olive bar, cheese bar, gift shop, fresh flowers, pet products, personal products, paper products for kitchen and bath, and many other household items.

If the first place was called a General Store, doesn’t it seem that the second place should also be called a General Store, generally speaking?

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Notermann’s, as the first store came to be called, served people far beyond Victoria as they made deliveries on routes to Minneapolis and around Lake Minnetonka. The two-level store, which had a fully stocked basement and apartments above on a third level, was widely popular. Horses and buggies were used for summer deliveries and sleighs for winter deliveries. Eventually they progressed to trucks.

Fresh Seasons Market, on the other hand, makes deliveries to people on foot, shod but not cloven, pushing grocery carts out the front door of the store into their convenient parking lot, placing the bags of purchases directly into the customer’s vehicle, come rain or shine, summer or winter.

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At Notermann’s, the clerks waited on customers one at a time and chased all over the store finding each item. “Self service” arrived in 1945 with the creation of gondola shelving with food on both sides and aisles and groceries now filling half the store. Prior to self service, groceries consumed only 20% of the store. In 1967 it became 100% groceries.

At Fresh Seasons, the store immediately had customers traversing the aisles at their own pace, studying labels and prices, with many employees available to assist or answer questions. The store was self service since the doors were first opened to the public on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009.

Click here to continue More Than 100 Years Later.