Kroger Cincinnati Division backs off

On April 18th, 2010 of this year, a member of the Clinton County Farmers and Sportsmen Association was asked to leave his local Kroger store and either stay gone or disarm.  He was carrying concealed, but his 3 year-old had managed to push his cover garment up revealing his pistol.  The management team, recently in receipt of the Class “D” warning signage, felt said signage prohibited weapons in the store, period.  Four days later he related the experience on the club's forum.  

On May 6th, 2010, an Ohioans For Concealed Carry (OFCC) Coordinator happened to be perusing the club forum and came across the incident.  Certain there had to be a misunderstanding, he took it upon himself to try and run this to ground.  May 8th OFCC stopped by the store hoping to speak with the manager.  He had left for the day, but we were able to speak with one of the co-managers, and left information for the manager.

May 10th, 2010 OFCC was able to visit with the store manager.  We discussed the Ohio Liquor Control Board Class D signage and agreed it was a warning for those without a license, not a prohibition.  Further, he indicated he'd held training with his management staff emphasizing that both open and concealed carry were legal in Ohio, and the mere presence of a firearm was not reason to bother an otherwise appropriately behaving customer.  Problem solved, right?

Well, maybe not...  May 12th, 2010 the CCFSA member received a written response from Kroger corporate offices.  The important sentence follows:

"CINCINNATI 'Concealed Weapons – even if you have a License; still can not carry.' "  

Whoa!  That sure didn't square with the conversation OFCC had had with the local manager.  We immediately attempted to contact Kroger and ran into a brick (or perhaps "electronic" would be a better adjective) wall.  The only apparent way to contact them was either through: A) their "Contact Us" link on the web site; or, B) an (800) number that yielded someone that "...would have someone get back with you...” The former yielded a canned response initially, the latter nothing.  We did finally get a response nearly identical to the CCFSA member's.  Uh-oh.

It should be mentioned it was about this time that the power of the Internet was invoked.  Through the OFCC forums, and then many other Internet forums by the efforts of many folks, the news was spread far and wide.  People as far away as Alaska were utilizing the "Contact Us" link on Kroger's web site to tell them they'd lost business.

On May 21st, 2010 OFCC spoke with the local manager (where it all started )once again after having left him a package of info on Class D, Ohio Revised Code, "What businesses should know..." and some other items the previous Saturday (missed him again).  His take on the whole situation was that this was a non-issue, no one had spoken to him from corporate, the conclusion he and OFCC had come to two weeks earlier was the correct one, but he'd forwarded all the information to Division Loss Prevention.

With the name of an appropriate department, we were off to the phones.  A call to the Corporate HQ, after some shuffling around, yielded some names and numbers.  Those names and numbers (who, by the way, were friendly enough to our cause and somewhat confused by the fact it had even come up as an issue) yielded some other names and numbers.  And one of those was the "magic name”.

After an amicable conversation with the Cincinnati Division LP Manager on Monday 5/24/10, we promised to wait while he had his legal department research the Ohio Revised Code.  He promised to get back to us no later than Friday, 5/28/10.  Well, he did.  The important sentences from his email are:

"I have been advised our company will follow state laws regarding the Conceal Carry Policy, as you know this law may vary depending on state.
We currently do not post no weapons signs in our stores."

What prompted their change of heart?  Was it the hundreds – if not thousands – of contacts through the web site and 800 numbers?  Was it OFCC pestering them incessantly?  We'll probably never know.

Now, let us be gracious in victory.  Is this the overwhelming victory we'd like?  Well, no.  We would have preferred a "We're sorry, all CHL'ers are more than welcome in our stores."  But let's face it – we knew that wasn't going to happen.   What we have is Kroger saying, "We are not going to tell you, “You can't."  And they have acknowledged the Ohio Liquor Control signage is a warning, not a prohibition (albeit not in writing).

Given where we started on this, we believe this is about as good as it's going to get.  For many, this will be "too little, too late." So be it. Please don't contact them to say so - just let it go. If, on the other hand, this seems like a face-saving retreat for Kroger Cincci Division to you and you're willing to "let bygones be bygones," tell them so – let them know you'll be spending some of your Memorial Day (and future) dollars with them and it's because of this decision.