Brookshire Brothers moving to new, digital-only strategy for selling groceries

Brookshire Brothers has been my go-to grocery store since I knew what a grocery store was. In my Lufkin neighborhood back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I lived right across the street from one of the Brookshire store managers, Jimmy Brooks. During this time my mother began a business relationship with Wiley Eugene (Gene) Brookshire, one of the original brothers, another interesting connection.

In 1990, I went to work for a newspaper and Brookshire Brothers inserts, with their weekly specials, was part of the fabric of the newspaper and the community.

Fast forward to 2022, and Brookshire Brothers has officially made the decision to quit inserting their weekly specials in the newspaper via insert or display advertisement. To explain to you, our readers, their reasoning, it is three-fold:

1.Food prices fluctuate too often for inserts to be guaranteed accurate after printing

2. Supply chain issues do not guarantee sale items will make it to the store shelves in time.

3. They are wanting (and have been working toward) moving customers to a digital-only sales format for the past several years.

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Like it or not, this is their plan, and the pandemic, food shortages, supply chain issues, printing costs and gas prices have expedited their digital-only food pricing strategy. You can however, still get a paper copy of their insert when you arrive in the store for the time being. I was told this is because if they need to pull them due to shortages, they can. It is impossible for them to do this after they have been inserted into a newspaper.

If you want to see the weekly specials for Brookshire Brothers and you are comfortable with digital, they have digital versions of their inserts available online.

The store also plans to continue branding itself by bringing information, recipes, etc. through various methods.

As our society and business models continue to change, we as a newspaper and you as a consumer are forced to change right along with it. We are committed to bring you everything we can to keep you informed about the community.

Our two news platforms – the print edition and our online product easttexasnews.com continues to bring news from trained journalists, and advertisements from businesses partnering with community newspapers.

Thank you, readers and supporters of community journalism.