OREGON -- The dark green apron allows Karen Healy to blend into her workplace.

The 48-year-old mother of two may run a checkout line one minute and field a call about a job opening the next.

There are also flowers to tend, schedules to make and orders to place.

Owning the only grocery store in this village of more than 8,700 people doesn't give Healy immunity from even the most mundane day-to-day tasks required to operate the store her father founded 40 years ago.

At Bill's Food Center and other locally owned grocery stores in the Dane County suburbs, ownership means doing it all.

That mentality and work ethic has helped places like Bill's, Kalscheur's in Mount Horeb, Miller & Sons in Verona and Burbach's in DeForest compete against larger, corporate owned and operated stores.

"Whatever it takes," said Healy, who runs the store with her husband, John Healy, and brother Bill Faust. "Every day is something different. We work a lot but we enjoy it."

There is no shortage of grocery options in Dane County, and thousands of suburbanites drive past those stores several times a week on their way to work in Madison and back.

Milwaukee-based Roundy's has five Pick'n Saves and nine Copps Food Centers, with a 10th planned for Sun Prairie's east side that would result in the closing of the Sun Prairie Pick'n Save.

Woodman's, an independent based in Janesville, has stores in excess of 225,000 square feet each on the East and West sides of Madison and is planning a store in Sun Prairie.

Hy-Vee this week started converting a former K-Mart on East Washington Avenue into a grocery store and plans to open next fall.

In the last 15 months, Wal-Mart opened a Supercenter in Monona, and Target opened a SuperTarget in Fitchburg. Each has a full grocery department.

"What independents have to do is simply make sure there is a compelling reason to shop their store," said David Livingston, a former Roundy's executive who now operates a grocery consulting business.

"Generally, besides having good store-level operations, independents need to develop a more personal relationship with their customers. That's something that larger, sterile chains simply can't do."

Facing challenges

Many suburban Dane County communities have only one grocery store but as those communities grow, other grocery companies may see opportunities and challenge the established operator, Livingston said.

That could happen someday in Oregon, maybe at the corner of highways 138 and 14. There are no plans at this time but Healy, whose father moved his store to the village from Shorewood Hills in 1978, said the possibility is always a concern.

Wal-Mart has halted plans for a Supercenter in nearby Stoughton but Karen Healy said it's probably only a matter of time.

"We'll just do what we do best and take care of our customers," she said.

Karen Healy met her husband at the grocery store. John Healy started bagging groceries at the store in 1972 when he was 16 years old and attending Madison West High School.

Now, 36 years later, the store has been his only job.

"I kind of stuck with it, I guess," John Healy said. "I enjoy dealing with the people."

The store does several things to support the community. It sells Oregon High School sports apparel and has a receipt program that last year contributed more than $20,000 to local causes.

When the store opened in 1978, it had about 25 full- and part-time employees and was about 15,000 square feet.

Expansions in 1990, 1995 and 2003 have grown the store to 46,000 square feet and its workforce to about 100 people, making it one of the largest private employers in the village.

The expansions have also meant larger produce, deli and liquor departments, more convenience-type food and more than 80 doors of frozen foods. A salad bar is open seven days a week and on Tuesdays it becomes a make-your-own taco bar.

"The community kept growing so we just kept growing," John Healy said.

Growing to compete

Other independents have also grown over the years in an effort to stay competitive.

Miller & Sons, founded in 1902 in Verona, started as a corner grocery and is now 50,000 square feet in the city's downtown. Originally located in downtown Sun Prairie, Conrad's Sentry, founded in 1947, has moved to 1052 W. Main St. and has 50,000 square feet of space.

Kalscheur's Fine Foods moved from Muscoda to downtown Mount Horeb in 1961. The store grew in 1976 by moving to the village's east side into a 15,000-square-foot store, but expansions have grown the store to 25,000 square feet and 100 employers.

It remains the only full-service supermarket in the village but over the past several years, there has been talk of another grocer moving in.

One option could be for the store to again move and expand, which could head off an attempt from another grocer to enter the village.

"We're always considering our next move and looking at what our next expansion could be," said owner Bill Kalscheur. "Competition is always there. The town is growing and there will always be competition."

A personal touch

DeForest, in northern Dane County, is a two-store town.

It features a Pick'n Save that opened in 1995 and Burbach's, which until last year was known as Schultz's Market Place, a store that opened in 1952.

David Cocos, whose family had operated a 3,000-square-foot grocery store on Milwaukee's north side for more than three decades, said the sense of community and the store's 40-foot-long full-service meat counter is what convinced him to buy the 21,000-square-foot DeForest store.

It also provides room for Cocos to make his own line of smoked sausages, hams, bacons and snack sticks, something he had done at a different location while in Milwaukee.

"It paralleled a lot of things I wanted to have as independent grocery," Cocos said. "It was a natural fit for me."

Cocos just recently moved his German-made sausage-making operation from Milwaukee and is scheduled to begin production next week. He also is selling his meats in other locations in the area and wants to expand his outlets.

Another revenue stream for Cocos is his catering business where he uses natural hardwood charcoal and rotisseries to roast up to 1,200 chickens at a time. He also roasts turkey, lamb and whole pigs and can cater events for up to 10,000 people throughout southern Wisconsin.

The personal touch at Burbach's can include conversations with John Swenson, who has been behind the meat counter for 30 years or homemade chicken vegetable soup by Cocos. And it's what makes the business work.

"When I was in Milwaukee there was Kroger, Jewel, Kohl's -- they've all come and gone and my little store survived," Cocos said. "It survived on service, and I survived on quality. I'm aware of the competition but I try to do it differently than what they offer."