This series relates to businesses that are no longer with us. This cache is located near the former L&L store in Haslett.
The success of L&L went back to a simple concept conceived by Walter and Anna Levandowski back in 1931: Give people what they want and they'll become loyal customers! That idea prompted the young couple to gradually change the small gas station over to a food store. That was the official beginning of the L&L Supermarket. But it wasn't until the couple's son, Stanley, came onboard, that L&L started to evolve into the powerhouse that it is today. "I wanted to be a doctor. The grocery business wasn't anything I was really interested in as a young man," remembers Levandowski. But medicine's loss was mid-Michigan's gain. After years of renovations, expansions, and even buy outs, the family-owned business became L&L Shop-Rite, and ultimately, L&L Food Centers.
They provided mid-Michigan community with the first-ever direct mailing: a sheet of the week's specials printed by a hand press and mailed to several Lansing communities. L&L also was one of the first to offer a 13,000-square-foot facility with six check out lanes, employing some 40 workers.
L&L was a family-owned business in every sense, with the children providing most of the labor: bagging groceries, stocking shelves and running the cash register. Stan II and his sister, Stephanie, seemed to share their parents' business interest most, Stephanie with the accounting end and Stan the day-to-day operations. Under their direction in 1998, the family decided to buy five Goff stores and drop the Shop-Rite name, opting instead to become L&L Food Centers. Today the family owns seven stores in the mid-Michigan area, employing more than 700 workers. Their contribution to the community over the past three-quarters of a century is also a big boost to the economy in Lansing. "The amount of investment that's flowed through the community due to L&L is in excess of $500 million," said Stephanie (Levandowski) Birmingham.
In January of 2011, the Haslett L&L closed its doors for the last time. Currently, it sits unoccupied in a shopping plaza that already had numerous vacancies. What will end up in the former grocery store remains to be seen.
The cache is a small sized lock-n-lock container with a logbook and trinkets. Please bring your own pencil.
Congratulations to The Allen Cachers on the FTF!