Its good to celebrate milestones
Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations – all events we should celebrate. It seems like just the other day we celebrated 40 years in business and now here we are at 45 years since Neal Peters started this business. Early 1976 Neal got a tip that one of the Dutch Stores on Grandville Ave was for sale. The owners wanted to retire. He jumped at the opportunity and by April he was the new owner of Van’s Dutch Store. Full speed ahead he worked tirelessly making little changes within the store, building the inventory, developing the mail order side of the business. We have a small spiral notebook with a handful of names the former owner recorded of the mail order customers.
There are a few names in the booklet that are still customers 45 years later. We created an amazingly simple list of items customers could order and handwrote the bills which went in the box. Customers would send a check once they got their order.
Fast forward 45 years and you are reading this Blog post on our website where we sell thousands of products to thousands of customers all over the country!