Harroz explains that his first two names - Nick's Brett Drive Grocery and Nick's Thrif-T Wise Foodmarket - consisted of "a lot of letters." "A lot of people have asked that," Harroz said of how the Crest name came to be.
The grocery store sells the toothpaste, that is.ĭental hygiene, though, has nothing to do with the name Harroz gave his store when he moved it to 7212 E Reno in 1964. and all the expense I could, and give the customer the best buy I can." "And I wanted to drop all that and do it the simple way." "I went through the Gold (Bond) Stamps, (S&H) Green Stamps, and pots and pans and other gimmicks to encourage people to shop with you," he said. During 11 years at that location, he tried a variety of promotions. In 1953, Harroz moved his Midwest City store to 29th Street and changed the name to Nick's Thrif-T Wise Foodmarket. And I was tickled to death to get out of that," he said of the policy of allowing customers to charge groceries. A few lessons he learned on his own.Īt his first store, which he operated for seven years, he "went through the credit business. "We worked the stock and the produce, and we delivered."īut Harroz's father didn't teach him everything. "I did anything they needed done," Harroz said of his first job, at the southwest Oklahoma City store his father opened in the early 1930s. If the peddling of produce, canned goods and T-bone steaks seemed an obvious career choice, the reason was as simple as a 10-year-old boy.Īt an age when today's boys mine the Internet, skate on Roller Blades and ping hardballs with aluminum bats, Nick Harroz learned to ply his trade - at Fairview Grocers. With his military service complete, the young man didn't look far for the profession that would guide his future.
They voiced concerns over traffic, noise, safety of students walking to nearby Edmond Santa Fe High School and other issues.īut the homeowners lost - and Crest won - on every front, including a citywide zoning vote in April 1995. However - in size, emotion and legal expense - neither of those stores can match the one the Harroz family will open in February or March.Ĭonstruction on Crest's third store - its first outside Midwest City - started last spring.īut before bulldozers cleared a 15-acre field of weeds at the southeast corner of 15th Street and Santa Fe in west Edmond, nearby homeowners waged a king-size zoning war.Īllied Residents in Support of a Safe Edmond used two years of public meeting protests, petition drives and lawsuits to fight Crest's plans.
The Midwest City locations employ more than 650 people and produce sales that topped $100 million in 1994. "We delivered the groceries and charged the groceries."įifty years later, Harroz's two 24-hour Crest stores draw bargain-hungry customers from 30, 40 and 50 miles away. "I had a meat market man and a young schoolboy, and the three of us ran the store," said Harroz, a month shy of his 76th birthday. Through five decades in the grocery business, the Crest Discount Foods entrepreneur has stuck close to his father's advice - and enjoyed a few zillion carts' worth of success.įresh out of the Navy in 1946, Harroz used $4,000 in savings to buy his first store, Nick's Brett Drive Grocery in Midwest City. If Nick Harroz's daddy taught him anything, he taught him that.
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