"A little c-store with big flavor,” is how Amanda Mire, who co-owns Mire’s Grocery with her husband Jimmie, describes her store. The store is small, and it’s located in the unincorporated community of Vatican, Louisiana.
“My husband’s grandparents opened the store in 1979,” she explained. The store was built in front of their house, and eventually her husband’s grandfather opened a small gas station on the side. In 2013, they retired after running the store for 31 years, and passed operations onto the younger generation.
When Amanda and Jimmie took over in 2013, they decided to focus on foodservice. “If we were going to make it, we had to do more with food,” she said. “We couldn’t compete with Dollar General on typical c-store items. Each month I was pulling items off the shelf because they expired.”
When the Mires first added plate lunches, they sold around 14 plates a day, filled with pork sausage and jambalaya, chicken rice with gravy and corn macque choux. Even though they couldn’t afford much advertising, word spread. Today, they sell about 40 plate lunches a day.
“We only had two employees at the time,” Mire said. Today, even with a much larger staff, she says they can barely keep up with the demand some days.
A year after they took over the store, Mire left her full-time job. “I took over everything and hired a couple more hands.” One of those hands was Sue Guilbeau, who became the full-time cook at Mire’s Grocery. “She has the same culture as my husband and me,” said Mire. “She used the same taste in seasonings. She knew what we liked spice-wise.”
On Fridays, Mire’s Grocery does a seafood special, which Mire reports is their most popular plate lunch. “We always have a variety of seafood,” she said, adding, “when we do crawfish or shrimp étouffée as well as meatball and shrimp stews, it goes quickly.” Sometimes they sell out by 11:15 a.m.
Building a Perfect Burger
Plate lunches are the foundation of the menu, but the most popular item is the Mire’s Burger. It’s made with half-pound patties that are a mix of beef and pork. “We use fine-ground beef, mix it with our seasonings and ground Boston butt. Then we grind all of it again,” said Mire. “Grinding it a second time helps it to break down more and it has a more delicate bite.”
Mire likes her hamburger to be perfect in every way, including its shape and size. “We make the patties half an inch wider than the bun. ... When they shrink they fit the buns. I want the patty to cover the bun from edge to edge,” she said.
They use an unusual tool to perfect the shape of their patties: a ring fashioned out of a hose clamp. “We used to make the patties by hand,” said Mire, adding “I had a girl come in and she had heard of someone using a hose clamp.” They bought some from a home improvement store, sterilized them, and found that it helped with cooking time. “I’m always looking for ways to make life easier,” said Mire.
A hamburger that size can be tough to finish, so the Mires came up with a solution: the Pony Burger. It’s exactly the same as the Mire’s Burger, but a quarter-pound patty instead of a half-pound.
Mire estimates that they sell about 450 burgers in a week. On Thursdays, customers who buy a burger can get half off a second one. “Customers come from miles around,” said Mire.
All About the Customers
Going all the way to keep people happy is one of the things that keeps customers coming back to Mire’s. If a customer asks for something that isn’t on the menu, the kitchen staff will make it if they can.
“Someone came in the store and asked for Kitchen Bouquet,” a popular seasoning, Mire recalled. The seasoning wasn’t on the store shelves, but Mire had it in bulk in the kitchen, so she sold the customer a little cup. “We’re a convenience store. I’ll try to find what they want,” said Mire. “It keeps them from driving out of town to a large store.”
There are some large dollar stores in the area, but Mire is confident that their offerings set them apart from the chains. “We were worried about new stores hurting our business, but that didn’t happen,” said Mire. “Because we have the homestyle meals, people keep coming.”
