Look at the top of a can of green beans or a box of macaroni at Bargain Giant Foods, and youll see something you wont likely see at a supermarket: a price.


Theres no fancy electronic price-scanning equipment at this northeast Spokane marketstore employees mark a price on each item.


Its a little old-fashioned, but everything we do is a little old-fashioned, says David Roark, who owns the store with two of his sons, Kerry and Kevin.


The store is right up to date, however, when it comes to making money. Kevin Roark says Bargain Giants revenues have grown by 8 percent to 10 percent annually over the past five years, and the small supermarket expects to maintain that pace and exceed $3 million in sales this year.


Bargain Giant occasionally will get a new refrigeration compressor, and it recently installed modern sliding glass entry doors, but the grocery store largely looks like and operates like it did 26 years ago when David Roark bought the buildingand in a manner most supermarket shoppers havent seen in a few decades.


Checkers memorize price lists for produce and sale items, learning daily changes before going on shift. The owners cut meat and stock produce at times during the day, chatting with customers while they work.


Located in an old neighborhood at the northeast corner of Empire Avenue and Crestline Street, Bargain Giant has just 6,000 square feet of floor space. Kerry Roark says that was a common size for a grocery store decades ago. Now, however, thats much closer in size to a 7-Eleven than to a Safeway or an Albertsons store.


The foyer area in some of these superstores is bigger than our whole store, he says.


What the store lacks in square footage, however, it makes up for in sales growth.


We probably do as much volume per square foot as any of the other supermarkets, Kevin Roark asserts.


On average, between 900 and 1,000 customers come into the store during an 11-hour business daythe store is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. six days a week, David Roark says. In addition to being closed on Sundays, Bargain Giant is closed on major holidays and during the week between Christmas and New Years Day. Come the morning of Jan. 2, he says, some customers stand outside and wait for the store to reopen.


About 40 percent of the stores customers are from surrounding neighborhoods, but the majority travel from other parts of Spokane County. Roark says some of the out-of-neighborhood patrons once lived nearby and moved elsewhere but retained their loyalty; the rest of them have heard about the store from word of mouth or are attracted by weekly advertisements in the Spokesman-Review.


Meat and produce are considered the stores strong suits, Roark says. Those departments lure back most return customersand help the company compete in an industry dominated by the larger chain stores. Fruits and vegetables take up about a third of the retail stores floor space, and the meat department runs along much of the back wall.


Kevin Roark says Bargain Giant sells meats and produce at lower profit margins than a typical supermarket, primarily because the store doesnt carry any debt and has lower overhead than most such stores. With the lower prices, the store is able to turn over its inventory quickly and restock often, which has helped it earn a reputation for having fresh goods, he says.


Consequently, Bargain Giants percentage of meat and produce sales, compared with other types of grocery items, dwarf industry averages. Meat accounts for about 35 percent of the stores total sales, with produce not far behind at 32 percent of total sales.


The Roarks say that in national industry surveys, supermarkets report that meat makes up 18 percent of total sales, and produce accounts for 8 percent.


The other third of Bargain Giants sales come from grocery staplesnot specialty items. The store sells some beer but might eventually phase out of that, David Roark says. Beer accounts for a small portion of the stores sale, he says, and the store could earn more dollars per square foot by putting other food products in that refrigerated space.


It quit carrying tobacco products about five years ago for similar reasons.


Besides, David Roark says, Weve not had a burglary since weve quit cigarettes.


The store currently employs 20 people, including the owners.


Kerry Roark oversees the meat department, and Kevin Roark manages the produce. The brothers, who are fraternal twins, have been working at the store almost nonstop since their father bought it in 1976. They were 13 years old at the time, and their dad started each of them out at $1.90 a hour.


While still in their teens, each found their respective niches in meat and produce. Kevin left the family store after high school to manage produce for a grocery supplier here, but he returned to Bargain Giant a few years later. Kerry kept working there straight through.


Currently, the brothers are in the eighth year of a 10-year plan to buy out their father, who is transitioning into retirement and now works a couple of days a week. Consequently, the brothers are spending more time tending to the business end of the operation, and each estimates he is working 55 to 60 hour a week.


Its a way of life at this point, Kerry Roark says.


David Roark, who is 61 years old, bought the grocery store building after working for about 25 years in the grocery business, first for Rosauers Supermarkets Inc., then for Roundup Grocery Inc., which was a wholesale grocery distributor here.


The Bargain Giant building has housed a neighborhood grocery store of some sort since the 1920s. The building has been expanded a few times, although not since the Roarks have owned it.