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Janise’s Supermarket "After we’d get out of school we’d come to the grocery store and help our parents; mainly put stock on the shelves, pick up the boxes, throw the trash, clean the floors – so it was a daily routine. Come to work after you go to school…There was no paycheck. You would get a snack, but there was no paycheck." – Dwayne Janise Janise’s Grocery is an old family business in Sunset, Louisiana, but their recently-constructed location is still too new to appear on GPS map systems. There was a new road cut for construction, they explain, and it hasn’t been mapped yet. Janise’s is right off the highway and easy to find, though, so hungry travelers should not hesitate to set out with a map. NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Dwayne Janise (with comments from his sister, Laura L.) Mary Beth Lasseter: Hello; this is Mary Beth Lasseter with the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m here in Sunset, Louisiana doing an interview on Thursday, February 19, 2009. Sir; if you could please introduce yourself for me? Dwayne Janise: I am Michael Dwayne Janise, co-owner of Janise’s Supermarket. I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and we moved here in Sunset, Louisiana since 1974. Can you tell me a little bit about your family’s background? My parents were born and raised in Sunset, Louisiana. They moved away when my father was employed by National Supermarket. He became a store manager in Galliano, Louisiana at the age of 18 and he worked his way up in--in the company from there. In 1974 he purchased his own supermarket and that’s what brought us to Sunset, Louisiana. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, maybe their names and where they went to school? My dad is Larry Janise; my mother is Emma Jean Thibodeaux Janise. They both went to school in--at Sunset High in Sunset. And tell me a little bit about their family, their children. My dad is--two--two children; his--his brother died when he was real young, about a year old or so, so he’s more or less an only child. My mother is a sibling of seven and they--hmm. Is it a large Catholic family? Yes; it is, yes a large Catholic family. They did their--raised cotton as they were growing up and did their own farming. My grandfather, Mr. Thibodeaux was a--a welder. He--they called them blacksmith at that time. My father’s dad, Mr. Earnest--Mr. Earnest Janise, he was a carpenter. He did carpentry and also worked in the oil field. Can you tell me a little bit about the children that your parents had? How many siblings do you have? I am one of four; we have three girls and one boy. I’m the only boy. And I’m the second to oldest out of four. ---- Did--was there ever any French speaking in your family? Did your grandparents speak it? Yes; my grandparents speak it and my dad speaks it pretty well. My mother doesn’t speak it that well. She understands it but we were--we never picked up on it; the kids never picked up on it, so no--I know very little of it, so--. Let’s talk about--a little bit about the history of this grocery store. Can you just tell me how your dad got into the grocery business, how--how he wasn’t a blacksmith like your grandfather and sort of the jobs and how he came to own this place? He started working for National as a bag boy and he worked his way up in the company from there. And a friend of his, their in-laws owned a supermarket which is in Sunset, Sunset Community Store and they got together. They were partners; they bought this--this store. So that was in 1974. And from there they were partners for 10 years and then our parents bought out their partners and then that’s when I went to work for them in 1984. And we’ve been in the grocery business ever since. So did they start it from scratch I’m not clear, or did they buy an existing store from someone else? They bought an existing store. That store actually started in the early 1900s which is a little small community store, started in a wooden--wooden building and then years down the road it had different owners and then they built a--a bigger store. I think in 1969 is when they built the--the larger brick building which was 6,600 square feet and 2004 is when we relocated and rebuilt and became a 22,000 square foot store. Tell me a little bit if you will about this present store, if you can describe it for people who aren’t here to look around? What is it like and what does it carry? When you walk in the doors it has a very large open front area and it’s--we carry everything from produce. We have specialty meats, which are seasoned prepared, ready to cook. We have a full meat market. We have a bakery/deli where we serve plate lunches every day--and your basic needs to serve the community. Let’s talk a little bit about the deli. Or, I should ask; is--is the deli where the boudin is made? Yes; it is--yes. All right; well let’s talk about the plate lunches and the deli. Tell me what kinds of foods you’re serving to your customers around here. We serve--it’s like a home-cooked meal, so just like mama used to make it. We serve spaghetti and meatballs. We have pork and sausage stew; we do seafood dishes, which is shrimp--shrimp fettuccini and we do a number of nice home-cooked meals. We also make boudin in the--in the deli, which is our sort of strong point in the store--is our boudin. ----- It’s a combination of meat, rice, and seasonings, cooked together and we put it into a sausage casing and we call it boudin. And can you describe the process of how boudin is made? The way we make it we--you cook the meat in chunks; you cut it up. You don’t--it’s not real small but probably three by four inch squares. You cook it down until it’s tender. From there we pass it through a grinder, which will break the meat up and then we mix it with the rice, cooked rice, and then we pass it into a--we pack it in a casing, a boudin casing or a sausage casing. What sorts of meat are you using in the boudin? We use pork--mostly pork and then we have trade secrets in there too which I can't tell you. [Laughs] Okay; I won't press you on the trade secrets. I am curious though, a lot of boudin makers in this area incorporate liver and I’m wondering if your boudin includes liver? No; we don’t put the liver in ours. I--I don’t care for the taste of liver so when we made--got--made our recipe we excluded the liver part. And what sort of rice do you use? I know a lot of people have preferences for short-grain versus long-grain, Louisiana grown; what is your preference here? We use a short--a medium-grain, a medium-grain rice. It--we normally use Water Maid, I’m putting the brand out there but that’s the one we prefer is Water Maid. And what sorts of spices are you using? Is yours a particularly spicy boudin or is it more on the mild side? It’s a little more on the--on the spicy side. It’s--has a lot of flavor but it also has a little--a little kick to it. And are you using Louisiana spices or peppers and onions from this area to make it or where are you getting that? We--we use--it comes from our warehouse which is Associated Grocers. They--sometimes they buy local; sometimes they don’t so it’s hard to say if it is local-grown. But we use a large amount of it, so it--we order it in from the warehouse. When we talked on the phone yesterday when I said I was going to--asked I should say if I could come over and do an interview you had mentioned that it--it was a family recipe that y'all are using. Can you tell me a little bit about how you learned it and how you developed it and tweaked it over time? We took the recipe; we derived it from a rice dressing recipe which was my--my mother’s and from there we added and subtracted different ingredients to make it a boudin recipe. ----- Well let’s talk a little bit about eating boudin, which is derived from the rice gravy recipe. When do people around here eat boudin? What meal? It’s--it starts for breakfast, lunch, a snack, meal--suppertime; it’s an all-around food. We--we sell it from 7 o'clock in the morning until we close at 8 o'clock at night. And how are people eating it? Are they biting into the links or putting it on a sandwich? Each person has their own special way of eating it. Some take it out of the casing as they eat it. Some eat the casing. Some take it out of the casing and put it on bread or even pan-fried done and add syrup to it. There’s many things you can do with it; it--it tastes good with anything. Is there a certain time of year or seasonality when some sells--when it sells more than others or is it a year-round food? It--we tend to sell more during the wintertime because it is a hot food. We sell it hot and also it’s--it’s--becomes heavy on the stomach so when you’re hot in the middle of the summer normally you eat light because of the heat, so--. But we do tend to sell more in the wintertime. I want to go back to the idea of you being raised in the grocery store business. Can you tell me a little bit about growing up around the grocery store? Did you spend time here when you were a kid? We would go to school; after we’d get out of school we’d come to the grocery store and help our parents mainly put stock on the shelves, pick up the boxes, throw the trash, clean the floors, so it was a daily routine. Come to work after you go to school. Was that considered more a chore or would they give you a paycheck? There was no paycheck. You would get a snack but there was on paycheck. [Laughs] ----- Let’s get a little more perhaps of your personal story. If you could just give me a brief history, when you went to school, where you went to school, how you came to decide that you wanted to work in the grocery business from the oil field? I went to school in--in Sunset High and graduated in ’78. From there I went to work in the oil field welding. After my parents bought out their partner I came to work for my dad and started as bag boy, started cutting meat; I learned how to cut meat. And from there he was--groomed us to--to take over the business one day. And when they decided they wanted to--to retire, that’s when my sister and I decided we’ll make the commitment and continue--continue the business. And we’re here for a long time. Tell me a little bit about if you will--about cutting meats and how you trained to do it or were apprenticed to do it, because working in the--a butcher shop is a pretty specialty skilled job. Yes; it’s--it’s a--it’s an art form. You need to learn the different cuts of meat and how to break down the side of beef, the different cuts, how to pack it, tray it to present to the customer, and the quality before it goes bad, just learning all the different aspects of it. You also need to learn a little bit of how the customer is going to cook it to give suggestions on how to cook the different types of meat. So you need to learn how to cook it, learn how to become a cook at the same time as being a meat-cutter and a store owner ‘cause they look to us for ideas and--and advice on how to prepare a product. Now what kinds of meats are you getting in the store? Are you getting whole sides of beef, quarters of beef, and is it--where is it coming from? We buy mostly through Associated Groceries. It used to be--we used to have the hanging beef which would come in sides. Now things have progressed to where the--the packer does most of the work or a lot of the work at the packing plant. They’ll break them down and it’s called boxed beef; so it’s broken down into manageable pieces usually 50--60 pound chunks of meat where you have your different cuts--a smaller cut would come out of that or I should say it’s broken--more of the work is done for you. So it speeds up the process in the Meat Department because the labor is always an issue and it just makes it--they call it user-friendly. So it makes it easier for the Meat Department to--to do their work more efficiently. With--when these meats come and a lot of them are already prepped a good bit for you, how does that change the people who might be working in your meat market? Do you still have skilled butchers or are you able to maybe hire people off the street who don’t have as much experience because they don’t need as much experience? I don’t know how that works. We still need skilled butchers ‘cause we’re still doing actual cutting. It’s just broken down into smaller pieces. We don’t have the--the pre-packaged product that comes already from the manufacturer, packaged in the tray, ready for the case. We still make--we prepare it for the case. ----- Can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like to run a grocery store? What are your duties--or a typical day? Is there a typical day? Well our job ranges from cleaning the floors to putting up stock, running the register; we--we do what’s necessary to keep the business going. My main thing is doing the ordering and bringing in product and making sure our prices are correct and taking care of the customers which is really the number one thing--customer service. That’s what we build our business on and just being here. I do the ads; we--we work on the ads, what we run from week-to-week, so it’s just a daily--daily job. And what are your hours, your--your physical working hours--not the hours of the store? I--the open hours of the store is from 7:00 ‘til 8:00 at night. I come in at 6:00; we--we come in and open the store. Deli gets started. Also we--our trucks come in three times a week, so that comes in at 6 o'clock in the morning. I work usually ‘til 6:00--7 o'clock in the evening. We do have managers that close up for us so we don’t have to stay here ‘til closing. But that’s still a 12-hour day; that’s a long workday. Yes; it is. Thankfully I do have a partner and we rotate our weekends, so I work between five and six days a week. Would you consider it a good job? Do you like it? Are you glad you’re in it? Yes; I’m glad I’m in it. The term working for yourself well I have a lot of--a lot of bosses. All the customers are our boss, so it’s not really working for yourself but it is working for yourself, so--. Now do you have any children and do you think that--are you raising them to work in the store at all? I have one child and she’s not interested in the grocery business. She’s working in the--in the dentist office. That’s where--where she likes to be right now. So in the future, maybe she’ll--she’ll want to do this--maybe not. ----- How much boudin are you selling to the public around here and to give an idea of scale, can you tell me a little bit about Sunset? How big is the community? The area we’re in is about 2,500 people. It’s our town--about 2,500; we--we sell about between 800 and 1,000 pounds of boudin a week, so we make boudin every day, so we keep it fresh. We also sell something called boudin balls, which is rolled into a ball and deep-fried which is very good, so--. Are you selling those hot to customers or are you selling these products so they can take them home and cook them themselves? Boudin balls are mostly served hot. We fry them and sell them hot out of the deli. Also the boudin is sold three different ways; we sell it frozen, we sell it cold and also hot out of the deli. ----- When are y'all making it; is it a particular time of day that y'all are making the boudin? It depends if we need two batches that day or just one. Usually we’ll start early in the morning put it cooking. He’ll come in a little later once it’s almost finished cooking and then makes it--put it together. Put another batch cooking and--and make that one and then put it together. I’ve heard from some people that they prefer to use dried ingredients like dried onion powder, dried garlic, dried parsley because it makes the product more shelf stable and that sort of thing. How--what are y'all using here; are y'all using the dried ingredients or are y'all using sort of the fresh parsley and onions? We use a combination of both. We cook it with our--our fresh vegetables and also the seasoning that we put into it has the dried onion powder, garlic powder and so forth. Are y'all adding those ingredients after the meat has cooked or are you boiling them with the meat as you cook it? That’s almost a trade secret but I’ll tell you. [Laughs] We--we do it as we cook it; it all cooks together so you marry all the flavors together while you’re cooking. ----- There seems to be a great tradition in this area of specialty meats, things like the stuffed meats that you’re describing. How many other people in this area are making that kind of stuff besides y'all? There’s quite a few supermarkets that are doing it, mostly your independent supermarkets. We’re an independent; we’re not a chain. They have the--the ability to change small things and do different things at a local level versus a chain store, so they tend to do it because the public wants it. There’s a need for it. You said that you are an independent--this is a large independent grocery store. Are most of the grocery stores in this area independents or is--is the independent grocery store sort of a fading thing? We’re pretty strong in this area. There’s at least one independent supermarket in each town or city with the chain stores. And in a 25-mile radius there is probably eight independent supermarkets, so we’re--we’re alive and strong. Do you have any idea or could you speculate about why that is? There seemed to be a lot--to me as an outsider, there seems to be a lot of independents that are doing very well in this area, more so than in other parts of the South or in other States. Do you have any idea why that--why that would be; why the tradition here is so strong for the independents in the specialty meat markets? Well we do have a wonderful warehouse which--where we buy from, Associated Groceries in Baton Rouge. And their goal is the survival of the independent supermarket, the independent grocer. And they’re doing a wonderful job. We’re about 250--260 stores strong in between Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas--mostly in Louisiana. And they help us do--do a great job being competitive and getting the product that the customers want and need to take care of our customers. What kind and just generally speaking here, but what sort of volume are--is this store doing? About 1,200 customers a day--average, between 1,100 and 1,200 customers a day, so when that--we--we do a decent volume as compared to the other stores for our size. It--it--we’re holding our own. You are a large grocery store with lots of selection unlike some of the sort of smaller specialty meat markets. Can you give me a sense of how important the specialty meats business is to this grocery store? Are people coming in to do their general shopping and picking up boudin while they’re here? How do you--how do your customers come to you? They use us as--as an everyday shopping experience. Also we have people that travel from out of town to come for our specialty meats. They--they like what they--the way we do it, so they’ll drive from 20, 30, 40 miles away. We have some driving from Shreveport which is 190 miles away, so we--it just depends on what that customer likes and if they like our atmosphere they like the way we season, they’ll drive for it. ----- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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