Sprankle's Neighborhood Markets keep on evolving and deepening ties to their communities
Growing up in his family’s slaughterhouse business along the Juniata River in Tyrone, Randy Sprankle had a pretty good idea that cutting meat wasn’t what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
“When I was 16, I applied for a stocking job at the IGA down the road in Bellwood, but the owner said he only had a second meat-cutting position open,” Sprankle said. “And then he started talking about how that job would basically double my wages. So I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can be a meat guy.’ ”
More than four decades later, he is still a meat guy.
And that emphasis on quality butcher’s produce — along with quality in other aspects of food service — has led Sprankle and his sons Ryan, 41, and Doug, 36, from the purchase of the former Leechburg IGA in 1998 to ownership of three Sprankle’s Neighborhood Markets in Leechburg, Kittanning and Saxonburg, with an eye toward opening another store in New Kensington.
“In 1998, the Leechburg owners were looking for someone to buy the store, and they gave me a pretty good pitch,” Sprankle said. “A year later, I ended up buying the Kittanning IGA as well.”
At that time, Sprankle’s son Ryan had graduated high school and was ready to begin working full-time in the family business. But his father had other ideas.
“I knew that the next person to run the business needed to have some more training and preparation under their belt,” Sprankle said. “So Ryan attended Shippensburg University.”
When he finished school, Ryan joined Doug in taking larger roles within the business.
At one point, Sprankle’s expansion included a half-dozen stores, some of which have been sold over the years.
“You try things, you grow and you learn what works,” Sprankle said. “Doug wanted to add sushi to the Saxonburg store and I thought, ‘Sushi?’ But he brought in a chef who only does that, it’s become sales in a category we never even thought about it before. Now I take sushi home for me and my wife probably twice a week!”
At Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market in Leechburg, things are busy on a Friday morning — a potato chip vendor is filling the display stack near the front door, a FedEx delivery driver is dropping off a package, and several women are busy in the bakery. It is a long way from the sleepy community grocery store Sprankle purchased in the late ‘90s.
“We invested in going all-in on branding and getting our name out there,” said Ryan Sprankle, who now owns and operates Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market in Kittanning.
That branding effort has included recording humorous videos for the stores’ social media pages, hosting community events like the group’s annual camp-out during which they donate 10% of store sales to the Salvation Army, and particularly emphasizing their experience in a high-quality butcher’s department.
“The last five years, meat has gone from 12% of our sales to 25%,” Ryan said. “We’ve pretty much doubled it.”
Sprankle said switching to certified Angus beef six years ago has made a big difference.
“We wanted to have the best possible price and the best quality meat,” he said.
In 2018, Sprankle decided to sell the stores to Ryan and Doug, and he went back to being “the meat guy,” serving as meat manager for the company.
At the Saxonburg store, Doug Sprankle has built the company’s annual Oktoberfest into a communitywide event involving local businesses and fire companies that drew more than 10,000 people in recent years.
“When I see what he and Ryan have been able to do, I think back to my old friend Joe DelGrosso, who I knew in high school and who owns DelGrosso Foods in Tipton, near where I grew up,” Sprankle said. “They always had the ‘Thunder in the Valley’ festival, with the best fireworks. We’d all go over as kids and whenever I think of that event, I always remember the DelGrosso name.
“We’re trying to do the same thing,” he said. “To get our name out there as much as possible and be involved in the communities where we have our stores.”
That group of communities could soon include New Kensington, where the Sprankles have their eye on a few potential locations.
“We’re hoping to get something done out that way in the next year or so,” Ryan said.
For more, see SpranklesMarkets.com.
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