The Rise of Busch’s

Walk into Busch’s Fresh Market on S. Main, and you’re immediately greeted by colorful arrays of seasonal fruits and vegetables. There are juicy ripe strawberries—“fresh, hand-packed,” a sign boasts. Blueberries share a refrigerator case with raspberries, while vegetables beckon down the aisle.

Nearby, signs highlight Michigan-made items, from Traverse Bay Pizza Company pies to Ann Arbor Tortilla Factory chips, Zingerman’s Coffee, and pickles from the Brinery.

And if you look up from the meat department at the back of the store, you’ll see a set of windows. They mark the headquarters for Busch’s sixteen stores across Southeast Michigan.

The company’s stores in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Lenawee, and Washtenaw Counties employ 1,600 people. Busch’s is privately held and doesn’t disclose sales figures, but ZoomInfo.com lists them at $296 million annually.

Joseph Busch first opened “a little country store” in Clinton in 1950, his son John told the Observer in 1990. “He worked in a factory by night, and he and a friend built the store during the day.” He grew it into a six-store chain, sold them to a larger chain, and, when the larger chain went bankrupt, bought back the stores in Clinton and Saline with a partner in 1975.

In 1985, Joe retired, and his three sons, John, Doug and Tim, took over. The brothers share ownership, and John serves as chairman. (He declined comment for this story.) They replaced the stores in Clinton and Saline, and added one in Tecumseh, and then built the Main St. store and headquarters. Ann Arbor was chosen, interim president and CEO Gary Pfeil emails, “because it is centrally based to support the company’s stores throughout southeast Michigan.” A couple of years later, they expanded to the north side by taking over a former Kroger on Green Rd.

In May, Busch’s celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a week of specials, ranging from flats of annual flowers to frozen shrimp, barbecue ribs, and sourdough bread.

And next year, Busch’s will have a new CEO. Whole Foods veteran Bobby Turner joined the company as chief operating officer two years ago and was promoted to president last November.

“I believe Bobby will stay true to our values and our mission,” Pfeil writes, “as he remains committed to providing the highest quality foods and produce to the communities we serve.”

Turner spent more than thirty years at Whole Foods. He started at the chain’s fourth store in Dallas in 1988 and rose through the ranks during its explosive growth: there were more than 500 by the time he left in 2021. By then he was a regional president and company vice president.

Turner’s formal connection with Ann Arbor began in 1993, when Whole Foods opened its first store here in what is now Trader Joe’s. But even before that, he made a valuable local contact: Frank Carollo, a founding partner of Zingerman’s Bakehouse. Carollo was researching a second oven for the Bakehouse and heard that Whole Foods was using a similar oven.

“I traveled to Chicago, and spent a day with Bobby learning about his bakery and oven,” Carollo says. “I found him to be very generous and knowledgeable.” The connection paid off once Whole Foods arrived in town and became “a very large wholesale customer of the Bakehouse,” Carollo says.

Turner helped facilitate Whole Foods’ acquisition of Michigan-based Merchant of Vino in 1997, including the Ann Arbor store on Plymouth Rd. that’s now home to Way 1, an Asian supermarket. He also oversaw the opening of the current Whole Foods stores on Washtenaw and Eisenhower, as well as its landmark opening in downtown Detroit.

He laughs when it’s suggested that he’s the living history of recent Ann Arbor grocery stores. “Yeah, I know,” Turner says.

He left Whole Foods five years after it was sold to tech giant Amazon. A noncompete clause prevented him from working in the industry for two years.

While on hiatus, Turner heard that Busch’s was looking for a chief executive. Contacting a recruiter, he asked where the headquarters was based, expecting to hear that it was in Detroit or Grand Rapids. “She said, ‘it’s even better,’” meaning Ann Arbor.

He immediately hit the road to check out Busch’s stores, which range from 22,000 to 51,000 square feet. On occasion, he has been to all sixteen in one day. He generally starts at dawn and finishes in the evening, allowing him to meet employees and see how
Busch’s measures up to its competitors.

In Ann Arbor, at least, there are plenty. Along with Whole Foods, there’s Kroger, the independent Arbor Farms, and Michigan-
based chains Meijer and Plum Market. Founded in 2007 by former Merchant of Vino owners Matt and Marc Jonna, Plum now has twenty-five locations in six states, including two in Ann Arbor.

Busch’s and Plum aim for similar customers, who prize big selections of produce, wine, beer, and deli counter goods. And supermarkets are far from its only competition: Ann Arbor abounds with specialty grocers, ranging from Asian, Middle Eastern, Latino, and Indian, to the gourmet products found at Zingerman’s.

“It’s all competition,” Turner says. “It’s like there are too many grocery stores in Ann Arbor” chasing too few customers, “especially when school is out” and U-M students leave for the summer.

To stand out, Busch’s stresses its connection to local and Michigan vendors, which number nearly 200. Locally, it was one of the first grocery customers for Zingerman’s Coffee, which Busch’s has sold since 2007.

Along with multiple local coffee brands, Busch’s has become a major booster for Michigan’s craft beer industry. Both Ann Arbor stores boast refrigerator cases of all styles of beer, while racks of wine and specialty sodas sit nearby.

When the S. Main store undergoes a makeover next year, it will add spirits to its wine and beer selection. Plans include enclosing the drive-thru area, adding a branch of Starbucks, creating café seating, and adding a bigger conference room to the upstairs headquarters.

Baked goods are one of the store’s biggest draws, all supplied from Busch’s central bakery in Clinton. The chain also employs fourteen cheese mongers, including Bekah Last, a “swing cheese monger” who travels between the stores.

The stores offer at least sixty types of cheeses cut by hand on-site and more than 100 in all. “It’s an ever-expanding and changing collection,” she says. The most popular is Parmigiano-Reggiano from Italy—the Ann Arbor stores alone can sell a seventy-two-pound wheel in a week or two. “They go through it like crazy,” she says.

Given Ann Arbor’s role as Busch’s headquarters, you might think one of its stores would be Busch’s top performer. Neither make the top five. The leading seller is Dexter, followed by Saline, Plymouth, and Tecumseh.

“Think about it: there’s no other grocery store in Dexter,” Turner says. “Dexter has become a bedroom community for Ann Arbor.” In fact, Turner thought about living there, but his wife Stefanie Garcia Turner vetoed the idea. “I want you to have a short commute,” she told him. They now live in a subdivision near the Ice Cube.

Even with years under his belt, Turner is a newbie compared with Busch’s longer-serving staff.

Kaleb Brock, who manages the floral and produce department on Green Rd., has spent twenty-three years at Busch’s. He transferred to Ann Arbor in January after working for eleven years in the Tecumseh store. His wife heads the bakery department there, his eldest son works part-time in the meat department, and his stepson works in the dairy section. Brock suspects his daughter, age thirteen, may wind up working at Busch’s, too.

In his current slot, Brock feels he has found his niche.

“Man, I love produce,” Brock says. “Every season, there’s something different. Right now, we’re ramping up, getting ready to push melons” followed by soft fruit such as peaches and nectarines. His favorite season is fall, when apples, pumpkins, and mums arrive.

Kroger recently announced plans to close sixty stores, and other chains are merging. But at Busch’s, the big question is whether it should expand. It hasn’t added a new store since 2017,
although it recently remodeled its Novi location, taking over a former Rite Aid drugstore and adding 12,000 square feet.

Speaking theoretically, Turner says he’d love to enter the Traverse City market if it gains more year-round residents. Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids, which both have populations of locals and college students, are attractive possibilities. “We know our growth is in going west,” rather than Wayne County or Detroit, he says.

One challenge is hiring: “Today, everybody is a lot more busy,” Turner says, and it can be tough to find students who can fit a grocery store job into their schedules. Reliability can also be an issue among less-experienced staff. Says Turner: “You never know if you’ll have six [absences] in a week, or twenty.”

An engaged staff is important to him—and actually swayed his decision to join a much smaller chain than Whole Foods. He says he can tell that an organization is healthy if employees feel comfortable approaching senior management during store tours.

While job hunting, “I toured some [other] stores, and nobody would talk to you, and everyone would stay away,” he says. But at Busch’s, “that curiosity is here.”