There is a song that Armando Flores uses to describe his relationship with the people of Peoria Heights.
More specifically, it’s one set of lyrics from the infamous theme song to the television show “Cheers” that Flores holds dear when thinking about the years he has spent as one of the village’s most recognizable residents:
“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came. You want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You want to be where everybody knows your name …”
Those lyrics are what Flores uses to describe the 19 years he worked at the Save A Lot grocery store in Peoria Heights, a place where he grew to become a beloved figure in the community.
“When people started telling me and really making it known that I am not just appreciated, but one customer even went to tell me that I was ‘loved’ in the community, they used that exact word that I was a beloved figure,” Flores said. “It’s wonderful. It’s truly wonderful. Especially given the world we live in nowadays, there’s a lot of negativity, people do a lot of doom scrolling, as bleak as the world can be, when you find yourself becoming a thing people look forward to that is not the mundane, the sad or the downtrodden, you can’t help but feel proud of that but a little bit of me started to feel a little cocky, just a little bit of cockiness in there.”
To many in the Heights, Save A Lot, which closed on March 20 and will be torn down in April, was more than just a grocery store. It meant something different to the Heights, where residents hold onto a strong sense of independence and identity with their village.
But for Flores in particular, and to the customers who grew to love him over the years, the store meant something so much more.
From grocery store clerk to microcelebrity status
When the Journal Star first met with Armando in January, Save A Lot’s corporate office intervened and shut down the interview. At that time, Flores had not yet found a new job and was somewhat anxious about what the future would hold for him when the store closed.
Between then and March 22, when the Journal Star met with Flores again, he had found a new job in the bakery at Trefzger’s, right across the street from his longtime workplace.
“I wanted to work at a place that fills requirements for me, namely, close by, that’s in the neighborhood and has longevity as a business, and Trefzger’s, given their history, they’ve been there since like the 1860s, they fit that bill quite nicely,” Flores said. “Best of all, everyone in the area who knows me and loves me, they’ll have a second chance to see me. Leading up to the store closing, you would not believe how many people told me, ‘I am going to miss you the most Armando because you’re like the best part of coming into this place.'”
Jeff Huebner, who owns Trefzger’s with his wife, Martha, told the Journal Star that he had been a somewhat frequent shopper of Save A Lot and knew who Flores was, like many others in the village did.
“When we heard that they were closing we went ‘you know what, that man is coming to work for us,'” Huebner said. “He has such a great work ethic and he’s just super personable and everybody loves him. So, we asked him if he wanted a job at the bakery and he jumped at the chance.”
Trefzger’s, a popular bakery that should require no introduction, hired a man who also might not require an introduction for anyone in the village.
During his more than 19 years at Save A Lot, Flores become somewhat of a microcelebrity in the village. That status grew even more when he appeared in a TikTok made by popular Peoria food content creator Seth Boyer in March.
While he knew he had strong relationships with many, if not all, of the customers who frequented the store, Flores said he was somewhat oblivious to the fact that he had grown into such a known commodity in the community. His newfound notoriety has come as a surprise, but a welcome one at that.
“At the level that I did, oh, absolutely I was surprised,” Flores said. “Over the years I figured if life was a story people tend to come in, they see me as just a side character in the story that they call their lives and I figure, OK, that’s OK, I am more than happy to be a part of that. I am honored, very much honored. But when the store started closing, you know they say you don’t truly appreciate something until it’s gone or about to be gone, and I guess that’s when I started seeing it the most.”
So how does a grocery store clerk become a beloved figure in a community? If you talk to Flores for any amount of time, it should not take long to answer that question for yourself.
Flores says he tries to be genuine with everyone he meets and, as the Journal Star can attest, he surely is. That genuine personality, coupled with a knack for thoughtful answers and conversation, makes for no surprise that a grocery store worker like Flores would achieve the level of admiration he reached in Peoria Heights.
“It’s simple, I contribute that to one thing … well, two things, having fun and being really genuine about wanting to have them there and perhaps having a little background in psychology about what makes people feel good,” Flores said. “I’ve learned that when people come into a place, namely a grocery store, they do it at the end of the day as a chore like ‘man, I’ve got to go to the grocery store, I’ve had a long day.’ So, I figured what can I do to make that better for them, so it’s less of a problem and something they can look forward to.”
What really, though, may separate Flores from other grocery workers in the area, is his spinning. Flores is widely known, as Boyer notes in his TikTok, for spinning conveyer belt dividers and grocery items at the register for customers.
It is one of the things about Flores that caught Huebner’s eye too.
“We would go over there and of course he is super personable and we love the fact that he would take the little conveyer belt divider thing and he would flip it around like it was a pair of nunchucks,” Huebner said. “And he always had some, you know, some inspiring words to say. My wife, Martha, was talking to him last week and he was saying ‘you know, you just treat people nice and people will treat you nice back.’ That’s the way we love to have our people have that kind of work ethic. When he said that to her, it confirmed that was the best choice to see if he wanted to come work here at the bakery.”
A history of loss turns into a life of fulfillment
Flores lost his mother at a young age to breast cancer, leaving his father, a railroad foreman in East Peoria, to raise Flores and his two older siblings by himself.
Before Flores’ graduation from high school, he realized he wanted to get to a place in life where he could support himself and ease the burden on his father, who went on disability benefits after an injury. He needed a job and a plan. That’s when, more than 19 years ago, his father presented him with an application to apply for a job at Save A Lot.
Flores’ father thought the grocery store would be a good fit for his son who had two real interests in life, as Flores puts it, video games and “stuffing my face.”
Flores got the job at Save A Lot, eventually becoming the evening manager, after submitting the application his father had given him to fill out. Four years later, however, his father died, too.
When the Save A Lot store closed, Flores said it felt like losing his father all over again.
“After my father passed away, about four years later, I like to think that everything he left me for me on this Earth were my memories of him and my employment at Save A Lot,” Flores said. “So when the store went away, for me it was hard because it felt like I was saying goodbye to him again. Everything I was up to that point, was, of course I was standing on my own two feet, but a little bit of my father’s spirit and legacy took care of me and his children. Once the store went away, that was like my dad saying, ‘OK son, I did all I can, the rest is up to you.'”
Flores sees some irony, too, in the fact that he will now be working at Trefzger’s doing a variety of work including customer service, across the street from the Save A Lot site. At his new job, in a historic building fit with large windows, Flores will have a view every day of the demolition of the old grocery store that will make way for a new, mixed-use development in Peoria Heights.
“A part of me can’t help but feel there’s a sense of irony or a greater force at work and is probably in on that, because, remember what I said about my father giving me that place and having to say goodbye to it … as painful as that was for me, working behind the counter at Trefzger’s, where there are windows and I am going to have a front row seat, I can’t help but feel it’s a sense of irony or maybe destiny, you could say,” Flores said.
Eventually, likely in April, that old Save A Lot store will be torn down and Flores will watch a place where he spent more than 19 years, a place he feels was brought to him by his father, disappear.
The store being torn down will mark another loss for Armando Flores, in a life where he has had to experience the loss of his mother and his father. But it’s those losses that helped shape him into the man that Peoria Heights has grown to know — and love — over all those years behind the counter at Save A Lot.
“I am not stranger to loss and that might contribute to why I am so … why I have the kind of personality that people gravitate to,” Flores said. “When I am so used to being so sad in the years prior, all that’s left in me is the good stuff really. People love that.”
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: ‘Beloved’ Peoria Heights grocery store clerk finds new job, new outlook
Reporting by JJ Bullock, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
