Local icon Doscher’s IGA Grocery Store closing after 48 years in West Ashley
by Bill Davis | News Editor
All the cashiers are leaning on their elbows this late April afternoon, outnumbering the customers.
The top and bottom dry shelves are empty on every aisle. Only the top sellers are left, on the middle shelves, right at eye level.
Freezer cases are half full. Outside, the sign says “Store Closing Soon” while the logo of Whole Foods lurks behind it at their shared entrance of Savannah Highway.
Ricky Doscher, one of three family members who owns the remaining store – down from 20 in the mid-‘80’s – has already left for the day. Not surprising, since three days of his seven-day week he arrives at 5:30 a.m. to unload trucks.
About the only thing that’s full is the back refrigerated wall of pork and beef that used to be tended by butcher Norman Gaskins, who retired in January to take care of his mother.
The store is running at about 50 percent of its usual inventory as it prepares for its closing sale. It’s a slow day, but Doscher’s IGA is still open until the end of May.
Even the Little Debbie display case is empty. There are no Star Crunches to be found.
A few days later, the city’s Design and Review Board will vote allow the building to be razed, as it is over 50 years old and falls under the city’s historic building protection ordinance.
There are only two items on the DRB’s agenda that night; the second vote will decide whether the board will approve or send back plans for major changes to the company that is developing “West Ashley Station.”
Doscher’s has not been here the entire time. Before they took over the site 48 years ago, it had been an A&P grocery. In 2002, business had been so good that the family decided to invest and expand the site they were renting by two-thirds, bumping it out from 15,000 square feet to 25,000.
Sales began to decline last April when the city announced the store was going to be demolished. Some shoppers, who come from all over the region, might have gotten the wrong idea that the deed was already done.
Its business initially enjoyed a big uptick, as did many other grocers when Covid first struck and people stopped eating out as much and began cooking at home more. Supermarkets do well in times of trouble, like pandemics and recessions.
Chief executive officer Johnny Doscher, the brother with the accounting background, says that’s not what is closing Doscher’s.
“The developer did not offer us the opportunity to stay,” says Johnny. The lease is up the end of June. They must go. Hence the closing sale.
“Where will my customers go? I guess is that they’ll scatter,” he says.
Those who don’t want to spend two to three times more on steak next door will probably shop closer to home. Or head up the Hanahan store.
As for the employees, many have been offered jobs at the Hanahan store. Others will likely take jobs at other supermarkets, says Johnny. Some current employees have been with them since the 1990’s.
The Doscher family’s history with Charleston groceries goes back further than this store. The first Doscher immigrated to America from Hannover, Germany in 1881. Johnny and Ricky’s great-grandfather opened a corner store downtown on the peninsula.
In the mid-‘40’s, their dad put in meat in the downtown store and quickly doubled sales. His first stand-alone supermarket was opened in the 1950’s, located off North Charleston off Rivers Avenue next to where Marie’s Diner and Gerald’s Tires now sit.
The Doschers aren’t the only ones that have history with the store. West Of cast a net for stories and collected these memories:
Teresa Hall-Smith worked as a cashier there beginning in the mid-‘70’s while a junior in high school.
“Doscher’s helped to put me through college, and I learned the importance of a strong work ethic and have fond memories of my ‘first real job’ (other than babysitting). I also learned to bag groceries & still prefer to do so myself – – that way my bread is not on the bottom.”
Hall-Smith says she still likes to drop in, see Ricky, and pick up some ham hocks.
Mary Thiedke Grady used to come in to deal with cravings for watermelon while she was pregnant with her now-adult son.
“I’d grab a cart and flag down a stock/bag boy to help me get a watermelon into the cart. At checkout, the bag boy would walk out with me and place the watermelon in the passenger seat of my Triumph Spitfire…. Those guys were so great at helping me get those watermelons to my car!”
When Jane Barcott moved here ages ago from Albany, NY, she wanted to see what was different food-wise in her new town, so she headed over to Doscher’s.
“It didn’t disappoint. I asked a fellow shopper about souse and liver pudding…what does it taste like? How do you fix it? Then I saw a freezer full of everything but the squeal. There were some interesting, canned goods, too, and I purchased a package of hitherto unknown scuppernong grapes.”
Replacing all those memories will be three new buildings. On the site of Doscher’s will be a 16,000 square-foot building split into two spaces. The second one will be a 5,000 square-foot building abutting Savannah Highway where Burrell and Flynn’s had lived – it’s up for demolition, too.
The third building, also 5,000 square feet, will sit on the far edge of Doscher’s parking lot. No word on who the tenants will be, so they will all be empty.
The new buildings won’t have the history or the memories of Doscher’s. So go have one more memory. Shop the sale and say goodbye to a local icon.
