Business Profile: The Old Cannery

Fun Takes a Front Seat at The Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse

ARTICLE BY JOHN STEARNS

Image: Dave Radcliffe with The Old Cannery’s Heritage Bank relationship manager, Ann Fish

Fireworks, festivals, frankfurters, fudge, animatronics and model trains aren’t typically associated with furniture stores. But The Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse isn’t your typical store.

The Old Cannery, located in Sumner, Washington, about 10 miles southeast of Tacoma, is an experience as much as a sprawling furniture store: from its kitchen that makes homemade fudge in a kaleidoscope of flavors to its talking animatronic people and animals to its model trains that travel seven miles on a suspended indoor track. It’s also sturdily stitched into the Sumner community fabric—hosting holiday events, supporting fundraisers and generally standing out in the city it’s called home since 1984. “We’re not a traditional retailer by any stretch,” said Dave Radcliffe, CEO of The Old Cannery, which is owned by Sherry Grout and her mother, Mabeth Grout. “One of Sherry’s common phrases is, ‘Make it fun for the children and the rest will happen.’ Our store is all about kids and having fun.”

That explains the trains running through the showroom, plus interactive trains for kids to operate, wooden train whistles given to every child, the fudge factory, visits with Santa during the holidays and more.

Keeping the trains running for kids is so important that the store has two full-time employees who ensure The Old Cannery never stops conducting fun.

The Old Cannery’s location next to real train tracks motivated the model trains, and the store’s community efforts are driven by its commitment to the region. It also owns a double-decker English bus, 1942 firetruck and tractor-pulled toy train that appear in local parades. (In 2022, Radcliffe was one of the grand marshals in Pierce County’s annual Daffodil Festival parade that runs through Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner and Orting.)

The store’s holiday bridge-lighting ceremony, spanning over the Stuck River that links the store and downtown Sumner, typically draws several thousand people the Saturday after Thanksgiving and includes fireworks, Santa Claus and live reindeer. Santa visits the store every weekend until Christmas, drawing crowds of kids for free photos and wish-sharing. Special sessions are reserved for sensory-impaired children.

That bridge? It’s called The Cannery Way Bridge, and it replaced an outdated structure in 2019.

Before Thanksgiving, The Old Cannery delivered more than 1,200 turkeys for selected junior enlisted service members with families at Joint Base LewisMcChord (JBLM), just south of Tacoma, as part of the store’s partnership with military support group AUSA (Association of the U.S. Army). The Old Cannery has participated in the JBLM Turkey Drop for 12 years.

Events around Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day (the store has a tab on its website devoted to events) include store tent sales complemented by free hot dogs and sodas. The Old Cannery gives away about 10,000 hot dogs per event, Radcliffe said.

The store also plays a supporting role in the annual 5K Come Walk With Me fundraiser held each year in partnership with MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital in Puyallup. The walk, which raises money for items such as wigs and breast cancer research, starts and finishes at the store. It attracted about 1,900 walkers and another 1,000-plus guests this past October, Radcliffe said.

In another example of community devotion, the store helped a small Sumner business displaced by fire last fall by providing Old Cannery space for the business to sell its Christmas ornaments over the critical holiday shopping season.

Whether holding its own events, sponsoring them or helping others, “We do it because it’s the right thing to do and the fun thing to do,” Radcliffe said.

Community matters

“We have a tremendous relationship with the city of Sumner, which is probably one of our biggest community partners,” he said.

He credited Sherry Grout for creating the fun, giving atmosphere, which isn’t done for recognition or sales, he said. But doing the right thing translates to sales.

Heritage Bank, which handles The Old Cannery’s business banking, has the same community approach, Radcliffe said.

“They are a big supporter of the community here in Sumner the same way we are,” and financially support events throughout the Sumner-Puyallup area, he said. Radcliffe praised the manager of Heritage’s Sumner branch on Main Street, Debbie Garrison, for her involvement in the community and the branch’s helpful staff.

“The staff that’s in the branch here, they just make it work,” Radcliffe said. “They are just professional, very great people.”

Old Cannery’s roots

Sherry Grout’s father, Tony, worked as a Tacoma fireman in the days when emergency calls were limited to fires only. So, during his time between calls, he would reupholster and build furniture at the firehouse before eventually expanding the work into the Grouts’ home on Enchanted Island in Spanaway Lake in 1953. From there, a business emerged—and grew. Tony would build furniture from wood he harvested and he and Mabeth would sew the upholstery. They eventually added furniture from local suppliers, filling their home with merchandise, according to the store’s website.

As business outgrew their home, the couple opened a store in 1979 off Center Street in Tacoma called Off Center Furniture, before expanding to today’s location in 1984 and renaming the business The Old Cannery after the building’s former use as a fruit and vegetable cannery.

It was then that Tony handed day-to-day operations and marketing to Sherry, with Tony focused on expanding the building, part of which dates to 1920, Radcliffe said. Tony, who passed away in 2001, did several add-ons, the last of which occurred in 1995, noted Radcliffe, whose family was close to the Grouts growing up. Radcliffe became a furniture supplier for the Grouts’ store, then joined The Old Cannery in 2001 to help Sherry run it.

The Old Cannery building spans about 200,000 square feet, with roughly 77,000 square feet of that devoted to the showroom and the rest to warehouse and office space. The store employs about 80 people.

Tony’s woodworking skill is highlighted in the fudge shop’s bar, which is made from a 103-year-old birch tree that fell at the historic Ryan House in Sumner during a 1993 storm. He salvaged the fallen tree after the city called him to see if he wanted it, Radcliffe said. Tony also used timber from Goose Prairie on the backside of Crystal Mountain ski area to make the store’s front sales counter.

While fun and community are key at Old Cannery, the business is couched in furniture. “We’re a full-service furniture store,” Radcliffe said, carrying “everything from your mattress and box spring and bedroom furniture to your sofa, love seat, dining room and accessories.”

The store also equips home offices and sells outdoor furniture in the summertime, said Ashley Krebs, advertising manager.

“Since we have the luxury of having such a large showroom, we really do carry all of it,” Krebs said of styles and price points. “We have stuff that’s perfect for a young couple’s first home and then we have designer pieces that are something you would see at other luxury stores in Seattle. We have something for everybody.”

The store gets plenty of customers from the South Puget Sound region and others from Portland to Everett. Some even come from Alaska and barge their furniture back home, Krebs said. Others come from east of the Cascades, for example Suncadia near Cle Elum, Washington, she said.

“We really have a good radius,” Krebs said. “I think a lot of it is people have shopped for years with their families, so when it’s time for them to buy their homes, they always come back because they know what kind of service we offer and the selection.”

The Old Cannery tries to buy as much American-made furniture as it can from its wholesalers, Radcliffe said. It uses a Puyallup manufacturer, Grandwood Furniture, which makes furniture under Old Cannery’s name, called Old Cannery Classics, and whose founder was introduced to furniture-making as a teenager while working after school for a furniture vendor in Old Cannery’s basement. Another northwest supplier, Stanton of Canby, Oregon, is Old Cannery’s largest upholstered-furniture vendor for sofas, love seats and recliners. Radcliffe said Old Cannery puts the best price on furniture that it can without marking it up just to turn around and say it’s significantly marking it down to attract sales. “We don’t play those games,” he said. “It’s going to be the best price that we can put on the furniture.”

Heritage showed interest

The Old Cannery’s relationship with Heritage Bank began about five years ago when the bank offered a higher rate of interest for a savings account than the store’s existing bank at the time. The return on that account led to moving the store’s business account to Heritage, which handles all of the store’s deposits and daily banking needs.

The bank and store share similar values, and The Old Cannery is loyal to vendors it enjoys working with, he said, also praising attention to the store’s needs from Ann Fish, vice president-relationship banking officer for Heritage.

That good banking relationship proved invaluable during the height of the pandemic, when Heritage quickly processed a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for The Old Cannery that allowed it to retain staff and pay the moving company it uses to deliver customers’ furniture. When the store had to close for the pandemic, customers who had made deposits on furniture or special orders continued to receive shipments from the mover, which was deemed an essential business at the time, Radcliffe said. The loan allowed the store to continue operating behind the scenes even as its front doors were locked.

“It was huge,” Radcliffe said of PPP funding. “It gave us a feeling of confidence because we had no idea how long we were going to be down and we had no idea what it was going to look like when we opened it back up.”

Asked what insights he has for other businesses about the benefits of working with Heritage, Radcliffe said it’s simple: personal relationships.

“At Heritage, you’re not a number,” he said. “They still do banking in the traditional fashion of relationships.”

Visit HeritageBankNW.com to read more of our business profiles, then make an appointment with a banker who knows your industry.

ABOUT ANN FISH, THE OLD CANNERY’S RELATIONSHIP MANAGER

Ann originally started at Heritage Bank in 2003 and helped open and manage two branches in Sumner and Puyallup. After leaving briefly, she returned in 2018 as a relationship banking officer. She mainly focuses on building strong relationships with her clients and helping nonprofits and local businesses with their financial banking needs.