Grocery Outlet store owner Donna McCrea of Waldport is a non-stop ball of energy and generosity

 

By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews

If work ethic took human form, it might be a jeans-clad woman with shoulder-length gray hair, blue eyes and a rock-solid belief that you get back what you give out.

It might look just like Donna McCrea of Waldport.

Six days a week, she rises before dawn to get to her store, Grocery Outlet along U.S. Highway 101 in Newport, to start her 12-hour workday. She’ll stock the shelves, work the registers, take deliveries — everything you’d expect from a grocery store employee.

Except she owns the place.

So McCrea also orders inventory, interviews potential employees, handles building maintenance, chats with customers and juggles the dozens of other tasks that constitute a retail boss’ day.

But hard work alone isn’t what has made her — in under five years — one of the most appreciated and applauded business owners in Lincoln County. She also generously supports local food banks and causes with cash and supplies.

“Donna either gives us food outright, or discounts foods that are close to their expiration dates, but still perfectly good for consumption,” says Waldport Food Share manager Linda Ballas, who shops weekly at Grocery Outlet but rarely gets a chance to chat with the owner. “She’s so busy, always running around.”

“She definitely gives more than most of our other ‘angel’ companies” which donate to the food bank, Ballas said. “Donna goes above and beyond what other donors do.”

Those sentiments are echoed by Yachats Food Pantry leader Pam Luderitz and food shopper Jim Finlayson. They’re both volunteers and members of the Yachats Community Presbyterian Church, which lets the community pantry run out of its building.

“Without Donna, our clients would be getting much smaller grocery bags, a smaller variety of food and less meat,” said Luderitz.

“Most of our clients are working poor, and without Donna, a lot of them would get less,” says Finlayson. While quick to add that the Yachats area community is very supportive of the pantry, he says “it would be a lot more difficult” to meet demand without McCrea’s weekly donations.

“… she took $500 off the bill”

Finlayson spends $800 to $1,100 a week at McCrea’s store. He used to shop at the Grocery Outlet in Florence, but approached McCrea several years ago because the drive to Newport is easier.

“Do you give discounts for nonprofits?” he remembers asking. “Donna said ‘I’ll do better’, and when I got to the cash register, she took $500 off the bill.”

Food banks like these, including the Newport Food Pantry, aren’t the only recipients of McCrea’s generosity. Her store also supports the Salvation Army, and last year gave $2,000 to the CoastBusters campaign for breast cancer awareness. Pick of the Litter, the Newport thrift store that benefits Lincoln County’s shelter animals, got a $4,000 check last June.

Just weeks ago, she stunned the gathering at a Yachats Presbyterian Church fundraiser by presenting a check for $5,000 – after donating $500 in food credit for the gala.

“I cried,” says Luderitz.

“When I went to hug her I had to turn my face to the wall so it wasn’t obvious the state I was in,” says Finlayson.

All of which makes some people wonder what helps make this person so generous?

“I’ve always been like this,” says McCrea, 60. “It brings me so much joy. If you give, it will just get back to you.”

“I was brought up with strong values,” she says, remembering shopping with her mother as a child in Fresno, Calif. going to “the dented can store” to get groceries at discounts.

“We’re not the dented can store,” she emphasizes in describing her Newport grocery today.

The store is clean, well-lighted and neatly stocked with everything from canned goods to produce, pet products to baby goods. The 25 employees are eager to help customers locate items, deal with a cranky credit card or just be plain nice.

“I always tell my team that a customer who had a bad experience will tell 20 people,” McCrea says. “A customer who had a good experience will share that, too. I want our customers to tell everybody they had a good experience.”

McCrea spent several years training to “get into the Grocery Outlet world” by working at stores throughout the West. This is how the 450-store chain prepares its independent owners to eventually run their stores as they see fit. Prior to that, her work background was all in retail businesses.

“It’ll come back to me”

On the day she broke stride to be interviewed by YachatsNews, McCrea was a little late for the appointment. A regular customer’s credit card just wouldn’t work, and neither a cashier nor McCrea could get it to process. McCrea finally paid for the customer’s groceries and said afterward “It’ll come back to me.”

Time — free time — is the one thing that McCrea doesn’t have in abundance. Still, “I’m beyond blessed,” she says. “I’m grateful for all the things I have.”

Asked what gets her down, she has to think a moment.

“There isn’t much. But If I have plans to do something in the little free time I have, and something happens and I can’t do it — that gets me down.”

For the most part, though, “My husband and I have an amazing life together.”

Dan McCrea is a semi-retired airplane mechanic from Bend, Donna McCrea says, and “supports me in my dreams.” The couple has a second home in Maricopa, Ariz., where they vacationed for a week this winter. It was McCrea’s first vacation since opening her Newport store in December 2019.

McCrea says she thrives on her busy schedule. She doesn’t drink caffeine, eats mostly a plant-based diet, and gets just five hours’ sleep each night. On the one day a week she isn’t working, she likes to cook and walk her dog on the beach.

Then it’s back to work, and back to giving.

All this work and generosity hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Newport Chamber of Commerce named McCrea its 2020-2021 businessperson of the year, and her store the 2022-23 business of the year.

McCrea’s employees are fans, too.

“She’s a super boss,” says assistant manager Andrea Johnson, who has worked at the store for three years. “We have three sets of couples who work here, and that tells you something. We share recipes; we’re really like a family.”

One aspect of work life at Grocery Outlet that keeps things lively, Johnson says, is “the inventory is always changing.” That’s because the business model for the chain is “opportunistic buying,” explains McCrea. Unlike traditional food stores that stock the same items week in and week out, Grocery Outlet goods are “here today, gone tomorrow,
she says.

“We price 40-70 percent off for customers, but if you see it and you want it, you’d better get it now.”

During an interview, the Waldport resident multi-tasks by placing an order from a computerized list of newly available items.

“Yogurt! Boston cream pie! Give me lots of those!”, she exclaims, pounding her feet on the floor in excitement.

Passion for life

McCrea is fully aware that some people find her schedule and her work ethic unusual.

“People sometimes say, ‘Oh, you’re just amazing,’ but I don’t think of myself as that. I tell my staff that I’m just a human. I just have a passion for life.”

So she doesn’t speed from her office to the check-out line to the stockroom wearing a halo, or a super-hero cape. And she’s the first to point out that her generosity pays off in a very real sense.

“I’m not above self-promotion,” she told the fundraising crowd at the Yachats church event. “I want you to go to Grocery Outlet.”

Her habit of giving “Totally helps the business,” she says. “The model for Grocery Outlet is family-owned, small businesses that are out in the community.”

“This”— she says, pointing to a wall in her office with news clippings of some of her donations — “is my marketing.”

She reflects for a few seconds when asked if she would change anything about her business experience, before saying “I would do this — Grocery Outlet — sooner because I just love it.”

• Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com