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Photograph by George Sakkestad
Lindsay Osborn, 12, has worked for her father, Darrell Osborn, for the past five years at the Summit Store in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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Summit Store has big-city foods with country flavor By Suzanne Cristallo
Each weekday morning at the Summit Store, a group of preschoolers gathers in front of the automatic front doors. As they swing open, the children chorus gleefully, "Good morning, my darling!"
Checker Theresa Urias can't put her finger on how the greeting meant for her got started. But it has become a ritual signaling the start of a new day at the grocery store that has been a gathering spot for the mountain community above Los Gatos for more than 45 years.
The children come for the hot chocolate and pastries and the sandwiches Ann Scott makes fresh each morning in the deli. Parents and daycare workers chat while Brian Hansen runs his tumbler in the meat department, marinating roasts and chickens in special sauces. Country music sets a comfortable beat in the background.
As they leave the store, Urias gives each child a gummy worm--the reward for good store behavior--and she gets a hug.
"That's what we're all about," says Darrell Osborn, 44, who has owned the store with wife Karen, 40, for 23 years. "We try not to be owners. We try to be friends."
The original store--4,500 square feet of old barn wood, shingles and sturdy roof trusses--was built in the late 1930s. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake crumbled the old concrete pad under the store and damaged the structure enough so that repair was not cost-effective. The Osborns decided to rebuild. Darrell designed a 7,000-square-foot structure with a "contemporary country" look.
While it took only six months to build, it took two years to get permits, a lapse of time that proved a hardship for a community dependent on the store for provisions. Customers come from the areas of Bear Creek, Highland, Old Santa Cruz Highway and Summit Road as well as Redwood Estates and Loma Prieta, a 30-minute drive.
They come eagerly to the new store. Steel-beamed, lofty and airy, it's filled with all of the basic food items needed in a growing community and is gradually adding specialty items like hot sauces, olive oils and fancy crackers. The deli provides fresh salads like potato, macaroni, seafood and green along with a variety of popular sandwiches and barbecue chicken. In the meat department, a big seller is tumbled meat marinated in Bloody Mary--a spicy drink mix--or chicken in Cajun, lemon or teriyaki sauces.
The meat department is where 21-year-old Darrell started work soon after he and Karen, then 17, married. The department was independently owned and operated out of a tiny space leased by the store. When Darrell heard the small business was for sale, he jumped at it.
"I didn't know a thing about meat, but a friend taught me what he knew in 30 days," Darrell recalls, adding with a chuckle, "I also asked the meat truck drivers how to do a lot of things." Occasionally, he would make $100 worth of sales in a day, a milestone he celebrated with Karen when it happened. "I guess youth says 'Go for it!' Failure was never in our thoughts," he says, reflecting on the meager living the early days brought. But the $100-a-day sales began occurring more frequently, and when store owners Don and Rosemarie Jeskes decided to sell in 1976 after 22 years, the Osborns jumped again.
The Osborns grew up in Watsonville. Darrell spotted Karen as a girl of 14 when she worked at the local pancake house. He remembered her two years later when he saw her at a high school dance. "I asked her to dance, and that was it." They were married a year later. Today, their children Nicole, 21, Stacey, 16, and Lindsay, 12, all work in the store with both parents, commuting from a new residence in Aptos.
Summit Store, 24197 Summit Road., Los Gatos. Open Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. 8 a.m.-8 p.m. 353-2186.
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Saratoga, California Since 1975
