The Winegar family has been in the Utah grocery industry since 1917. Since Dee and Bill took over the family business in 1995, they have taken a progressive attitude in serving their customers and modernizing their stores. In 1996, the Winegars built a new store in Roy, Utah and in 1997 replaced their Clearfield location. Their Bountiful store remains their corporate office.
Each of the Winegar’s stores has been designed and built to serve the community. Dee has started with the good people they hire to provide lasting customer service. Each store also features strong perishable departments and state-of-the-art technology.
Dee studied business and Spanish at the University of Utah. When not working at one of the stores, Dee has continued to serve his community with the local Chamber, United Way, Boy Scouts of America and through church service.
The following article was written by Lee Benson and published by the Deseret News.
Not everyone looks at the place where they work as Shangri La, but Shannon Butterfield does.
Shannon works at Winegars, a food store in Bountiful she describes as "sort of like heaven." That's not on account of the pay. She's not exactly on the fast track to making the Forbes list. Matter of fact, five months ago, right after she married her husband, Jared, Shannon and Jared decided it would be great if they were wealthier, so Shannon left Winegars to look for higher pay.
What she got was a lot of doors shut in her face. People would take a sideways glance at the scar on her forehead and listen to her slightly slower speech and suddenly remember a pressing appointment. In all, she filled out 14 job applications. "We'll get back to you," she was told 14 times. No one did.
"She walked into places with signs that said 'Now Hiring' and they told her, 'We're not hiring right now,' " remembers Jared. "I saw how much she was struggling emotionally, so she came back to Winegars. They were so happy to get her back, they gave her a raise."
Winegars is one of those rare places of business that is infirmity blind. Don't accuse them of hiring the handicapped because they don't see handicaps. All they see are people.
As Shannon says, "Other places I've worked, the bosses treat me like I'm lower class; here, they treat me like I'm as high up as they are."
Shannon says this with the perspective of one who has been born twice. The first time was 28 years ago when she arrived on Earth. The second time was 12 years ago when she regained consciousness after a drunken driver ran a stop sign and smashed into the car she was riding in.
"It was no fender-bender," says Shannon. "I had to learn everything again, how to eat, how to walk, how to talk, everything."
Some brain damage was unavoidable, as were the scars. She knows she's not the same drop-dead gorgeous, intelligent blonde she was before the accident. Now she's a different kind of drop-dead gorgeous, intelligent blonde.
Another thing she knows: People tend to treat you differently when you're different. There's a rough side of the street out there for the disenfranchised.
"I was once part of that rough side," Shannon says a bit ruefully.
"It was so hard to get back to liking life at all after the accident," she admits. After a long, painful recovery, she finally got back to the business of taking care of herself. She worked at all sorts of jobs, as a hotel maid, at a movie theater, in child care, at Deseret Industries, at a hearing center.
None were particularly easy, until along came Winegars, where manager Rod Lunceford routinely hires people used to getting doors slammed in their faces.
Lunceford says the compassionate hiring policy goes back to store owner Dee Winegar. "He has a soft heart," says Lunceford. "He's the one who gives us the freedom to hire who we want. People need opportunity; some of these people, if we don't provide that opportunity, who will?"
More often than not, it works out. In Shannon's case, for instance, the store's high expectations for her led to her own high expectations and Winegars wound up with a public relations marvel.
Shannon's goal when she comes to work is to make sure that no one, no matter what they were wearing when they came in, leaves the store without a smile. She has proven so successful that management made a special badge she wears on her red apron.
"My badge says I'm a Customer Service Expert," says Shannon. "But really I'm a bagger."
Last October, when she and Jared tied the knot, half the people at their wedding reception were people whose groceries Shannon had bagged.
It was right after the wedding that she set out for other employment — a short-lived fling that only gave her more appreciation for a workplace where "if I have my hair a little out of place, I feel like no one's going to judge me."
"It's like a community here," she says, "there's a healing effect; I'm comfortable here. To shop here or work here, you don't have to be a special kind."
