Carrollton, Texas
My grandfather was the original owner of the Busy Bee. My father managed it, and later bought it with my uncle as co-owners. Between them they spent most of their working lives making sure that when a family in Carrollton came through the door, somebody knew what they were after.
Two newspaper clippings are most of what I have left of it. This page is for them.
My grandfather
The original owner, and a veteran market man. Reared in Dallas County, he had been running markets and groceries since 1950 — three stores in Oak Cliff, which he sold when he came to Carrollton in 1962 to buy into the local business.
He was still behind the block in 1970, cutting meat to fit the customer. One of six butchers in his own store, because that was the job.
My father
Co-manager, and later co-owner. A Dallas native out of South Oak Cliff High School, he started as a clerk and stockboy at Davenport Grocery in Oak Cliff — the name over that door belonged to the man whose daughter he would marry.
He stayed with the store through two and a half years of business school at Arlington State, went to Affiliated Foods in Dallas, served eleven months with the 49th Division of the Texas National Guard at Fort Polk, and came back to groceries for good.
Managing the Busy Bee was not where it ended: in time he and my uncle bought the store from my grandfather and ran it as co-owners.
Progress Edition · Thursday, March 19, 1970
Six thousand square feet on South Broadway, and the paper called it the largest meat market of its kind in Dallas County. Five butchers and a butcherette worked the service counter, cutting to order rather than to a tray.
“There are very few markets like this left,” my grandfather told the reporter in 1970. He was right.
6
butchers, counting the owner
6,000
square feet of floor
2×
Green Stamps on Wednesday
1
Trailways bus stop, inside the store
In his own words
“There is something different happening every day. It gives one the chance to meet the public. There is always the goal of trying to serve the people better.”
Buddy Marchant, asked why he stayed in the grocery business
The local paper ran a profile of him: twenty-nine years old, about ten years in the grocery business, and freshly in charge in Carrollton. In January of 1964 he was made manager of the Busy Bee on Lake June Road; a year later they moved him to Carrollton.
What he liked about the work, he said, was that it left some time for home-life — a wife of five years, a two-year-old son, and a yard he called his hobby. What he wanted was to grow with the company and make supervisor when the chain expanded.
And he liked Carrollton: “People here in Carrollton are friendlier than those anywhere else I've worked… I think the store will grow with Carrollton as Carrollton grows.”
1950
R. L. Davenport is operating markets and groceries in Dallas County — eventually three stores in Oak Cliff.
1952–53
Buddy Marchant, high-school ROTC: Best Dressed Cadet, and the Best Non-Commissioned Officer Award the year after. Then a clerk and stockboy job at Davenport Grocery.
1962
Davenport sells the Oak Cliff stores and comes to Carrollton. Gene Kidd joins the food store the same year.
Jan 1964
Buddy is made manager of the Busy Bee on Lake June Road in Dallas.
1965
A year later, Carrollton's Busy Bee. Father-in-law and son-in-law, same store.
Mar 1970
The Progress Edition puts the Busy Bee Thrif-Tee Food Store on the front of the section: five butchers, a butcherette, and Choice and U.S. Good meats cut to suit the customer.
Early 1980s
My father and uncle sell the store to a third party. My brother and I had worked there by then. My parents open a business of their own next.
The Busy Bee was where I started working, and where my older brother started before me. I worked every part of that store except the butcher shop — he took that side of it and learned the ropes cutting meat.
I learned to drive riding to the store with my grandfather. I found out what a long hard day actually is. I saw what values and a work ethic look like: my dad was doing the job, and there was nobody there to do it for him. And more than any of it, I learned that taking care of the customer is the job — not a slogan hung above the job.
Early 1980s
My father and my uncle sold the Busy Bee to a third party. That closed out the era of it being a family business.
It didn't close out the entrepreneurship. My father and mother went and opened a business together instead.
“We try to please the customer as much as possible.” That is what my father told the paper, and it is the whole brief. A shopping list app is a small thing next to a meat counter, but the standard transfers.
Your list is grouped by your stores and your aisles, not by somebody's idea of a tidy database.
No password to remember, no app store, nothing to download. You open it and it works.
It keeps running in the back corner of the freezer aisle with no signal at all, and catches up later.
Busy Bee Grocer is free, and it's named after their store. If you have a photograph of the Busy Bee, or you shopped there, I would like to hear about it.