For Rossi Imperato of Wenatchee, the Plaza Super Jet is more than a neighborhood grocery store. It’s a way of life.

The small food store at the corner of Okanogan and Orondo streets has been a fixture in the Wenatchee community for so long that many customers like Imperato have shopped there for the better part of their adult lives.

As a result, Imperato has a real appreciation for what this unique community grocery store has become over the years.

“I’ve been shopping at this store for 23 years,” said Imperato, one of the more colorful characters who frequent the Plaza Super Jet. “I like shopping there because it’s a very convenient location and they have good deals on groceries. I like their produce and meat departments, and I really appreciate the friendliness of the staff.”

It’s that personal touch that also keeps Bruce Simpson, another loyal shopper of more than two decades, coming back.

“I always get a warm greeting by name at Plaza Super Jet,” Simpson said. “It’s like your own personal grocery store.”

Over the years, the Plaza Super Jet has had many different owners, has undergone several major renovations, and has survived the Great Depression, several wars and economic recessions.

Despite everything that has changed for the community grocery store over the past 86 years, the one thing that has remained the same is the location.

Paul and Helen Kinney understood the importance of location in 1926 when they started the Plaza, a small food store and confectionery, there in the heart of Wenatchee. Today the 10,000-square-foot store has 20 employees and is known as Plaza Super Jet (plazasuperjet.com), the biggest little store in town. It is currently owned by Jeff Lau and long-time employee Barb Pool.

Lau and former business partner David Johnson purchased the store in 2002 from Lau’s father, Don. The new owners visited grocery stores in the Seattle area and noticed customers preferred ones that were clean, well lit and well organized. They worked hard and invested a good deal of time and money to make their Wenatchee store more attractive to shoppers by installing new lighting, floors, paint, coolers and automatic doors.

“Jeff has really taken the store to a higher level,” said Simpson, owner of Bruce Simpson Fine Jewelers in downtown Wenatchee. Simpson lives and works within walking distance of the store and has been shopping there for 26 years.

“He has put together a great team of workers who provide excellent and friendly service,” Simpson said. “The store is very clean and organized — it’s really easy to find things. And they have just about everything a person could want.”

Lau’s customers range the demographic spectrum, from the professionals working in the federal building and downtown businesses, to the folks who are struggling to live life one day at a time.

“We have a very diverse customer base,” Lau said. “We get a huge cross section of Wenatchee society, and we like that.”

Along with embracing his diverse customers, Lau also embraces the belief that because grocery stores are all similar, it’s crucial that a business stand out somehow from the competition.

“Everybody has groceries,” Lau said. “The middle of our store is basically the same as any other store. What makes us different is not the middle of the store, but what we offer in addition to the basics.”

The store features a delicatessen, specialty donuts (including bacon maple bars), and an espresso shop with comfortable indoor seating. It carries a good selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, and even has a Western Union office. It also carries local wines with familiar labels and has a meat shop with its own professional butcher.

For those customers who like to try the products of different microbreweries, the store has an impressive supply of beers from around the area — including Iron Horse Brewery in Ellensburg, Old School House Brewery in Winthrop, and Ice Harbor Brewery in Kennewick — as well as a few popular ones from outside the state, like the Great Divide Brewery in Denver.

Customers new to the store quickly notice a detail that gives it a unique and hometown feel — the aisles are named after city streets located close to the business.

Need milk, eggs, or apples? Find those on Wenatchee Avenue. Go to Okanogan Avenue for a quart of oil for your car or a spiral notebook for your sixth-grader’s science class. Orondo Street is where you will find food for your favorite canine or feline friend. Spices and canned goods are found on Kittitas Street, and cruise down Yakima Street for your corn flakes or baby food. You can find ‘Yakima Desert Rain’ — one of 10 blends of whole roasted coffee beans — on Palouse Street, grind and bag it right there, and enjoy freshly ground coffee at home a few minutes later.

Growing competition from nationwide big-box stores that also carry groceries is a concern for small independent grocers anywhere in the country. So how does a small grocery store in downtown Wenatchee keep its head above water when competing with the big conglomerates?

“Although we’re small, we’re still competitive,” Lau said. “We are part of the URM co-op buying group, so it gives us good buying and advertising power. But we’re still all independently owned.”

Being an independent grocer has its advantages. One of them is being able to affect change when necessary.

“We knew Walmart was eventually going to come to town,” Lau said. “I’m so glad that when David and I took over the store that we prepared for that and did everything we could to improve the store at that time. I would probably not be able to turn a store around like that in today’s economic environment. There’s not a day goes by that I’m not really glad that we did what we did when we did it.”

Good decisions made at the right time in the past decade made all the difference for this business, and could very well have prevented it from going under when Walmart expanded this past year.

“We did feel the impact of the Walmart expansion — we were not immune to that,” Lau added. “What we can do that the big-box stores can’t necessarily do is offer very good service. Our employees all work just a little bit harder and faster, are very helpful and will get you out as quickly as they possibly can.

“I would put our employees up against anybody service-wise.”