Lunds and Byerly's new name misses a great opportunity

The news is sweeping the town like a brush fire in an oil patch: Lunds and Byerly's are — is? — changing their name.

Lunderlys? Byerund?

It's no longer Lunds AND Byerly's, which everyone pronounced Lundsenbyerlees. You may now call it Lunds & Byerlys. When I told someone this important news I got a blank stare, because I'd said "Lunds Ampersand Byerlys," which sounds like Lunds, Ampers and Byerlys. The person was trying to process the absorption of the Ampers chain.

I was tempted to say, "I'm going to miss Ampers; they had a great bakery department," just to see if the other person nodded. That would be acceptable. If the other person said, "Oh, those croissants," you'd know you had a liar on your hands. Ampers' croissants were always dry.

You would not be surprised to learn there was an Ampers somewhere around, with a nice little company story about Frank Ampers, who founded it during the Depression, built a reputation with quality service, and pioneered the bar-code reader checkout in 1956, when he instructed his cashiers to say "beep!" when they rang up an item. They expanded to seven stores, but faced hard times in the increasingly competitive market. Company officials said they welcomed the merger, noting they were "sick to death" of the business and looked forward to living permanently in Florida. Three stores will be converted to Lunds, Ampersand Byerlys, and the rest will be razed and the ground salted and middle managers impaled on sticks.

Anyway. It would have been different if they'd lopped off one of the names, because people are loyal to hometown brands. Byerly's was the store you went to if you wanted to see how the other half lived. You expected that the carts would have small hammocks for poodles. Truffle pizzas. Spray cans of gold leaf next to the Pam in case you wanted to gild the ham. Lunds was where those customers went to just pick up a few things. They couldn't shop Cub or people would talk.

Did you hear Carolyn saw Betty at the Cub? No! I thought her husband was up for a promotion. Well Carolyn swears it was her and she stood at the end of the checkout until someone explained she had to bag it herself. And then after she bagged it, she just walked out expecting someone to follow her and she had to go back in, and she threw an absolute fit because the bags didn't have handles.

No! Can you imagine? You know, I hear at Rainbow people put everything in a lawn-waste bag and just drag it to the bus.

Here's the odd thing: I never thought of the stores as Lunds And Byerly's, like Crate And Barrel. I never say, "Look, dear, they're having a sale on Swedish olive skewers at Crate," because the store was not the union of Barrel Store and Crate Company, and also because I hate olives. But if a store began as a Lunds, then Lunds it will ever be, and likewise for Byerly's. They tore down the Southdale Byerly's and built a Lunds & Byerlys, and it's still Byerly's to me.

When they build a new store that has the new name, I still feel as if there are two tribes forced into a truce, and if societal order broke down they would separate into rival gangs and have Sharks vs. Jets rumbles in the parking lot. When you're a Lund you're a Lund all the way, from your first stocking job where you put things away.

As long as we're on the subject, did you know that CUB does not refer to a small bear? Of course you do, because when you think of CUB, you think of the circular with the ads you have to tear out without ruining the bar code, not an ungainly toddling ursine infant watched over by an enormous mass of maternal muscle ready to claw you to pieces. It stands for Consumers United For Bargains. They eliminated the F and passed the savings on to you, so it's not CUFB. No one would shop at Cuff-Buh. (Names matter: This is why Partial Foods and Incomplete Foods were struggling until they formed Whole Foods.)

CUB was born of the old Supervalu chain, and I'd give anything to shop at a Supervalu — simply because of childhood memories. Muzak trickling from overhead, warm bread smells, squeaky carts, shopping with Mom. I miss Red Owl, with that fierce and irritated bird head glowering down at you. I know stores are better now; the other day I went to Lunds to get dinner and ended up having dinner, what with all the samples.

The other day at the grocery store I couldn't find the frozen Chicago-style pizza they used to carry, and I actually felt betrayed. C'mon! No one else carried that. A clerk helped me find it; they'd rearranged things. I felt like an old dog: You moved my dish! When the cashier asked if I'd found everything, I said it was a dicey thing for a while. There was a relocated pizza situation. She was happy I found it, and asked the question you always get about your preferred bagging genre.

That's when it hit me: missed opportunity. The modern grocery is all about choice, after all.

Not Lunds & Byerlys. Like the bags, a question: Lunds OR Byerlys? One could be all paper, the other all plastic.