Fareway welcomes assistant manager
Sep. 10—CLINTON — Matt Langel, who took the position of assistant manager at Fareway in January, brought with him not only nearly a decade of experience but also two Best Bagger championship titles to fulfill a lifelong dream in Clinton.
As a little boy, Langel would accompany his mother to the grocery store, and as soon as he was tall enough to do so, he wanted to bag the groceries she'd buy. Ever since, Langel wanted to work in the grocery store.
He got the chance to do so for the first time at the beginning of his high school years in 2001 when he was just 13 years old. He then moved to Dubuque, where he went to college to earn a degree in biology with the intent to enter the field of chiropractic medicine. Simultaneously, he worked at Fareway there and was promoted to a full-time management position. Langel ultimately decided he wanted to keep pursuing this path instead of becoming a chiropractor.
In Decorah, now towering in height over the belt of the checkout lane, Langel entered the Iowa Best Bagger Contest held at the Iowa State Fair in 2018. This was a competition first held in 1987 that was designed to demonstrate the important customer service skill of bagging. Contestants were judged based on their speed, use of proper bag-building technique, the weight distribution of items within a bag, and the bagger's style, attitude, and appearance.
They're given 53 seconds in which 40 different items, including those that are cold or breakable, must be bagged into three different grocery bags. Each of the three bags must come to the same weight or the contestant will be docked points.
Langel refers to it as an artform.
"There's a technique to it," he says. "Basically, if you cut open the bag, everything should sit the way it is."
Langel placed third of 15 contestants, winning $150. Des Moines Hy-Vee employee Dwayne Campbell won the competition overall and was awarded $500 plus a trip to San Diego to the national bagging competition and a chance at a $10,000 prize, but Fareway employees, including Langel, placed second, third, and fourth behind him.
In 2019, while then working in Davenport, Langel tried again and placed second out of 24 baggers total, winning $250. Now that he holds a management title Langel isn't allowed to participate in the competition, but he tries to pass on his bagging technique to the 60 to 70 employees he now oversees, in ages ranging from 14 to 75 years old and in every area of the store except the meat department.
Langel says the biggest challenge of his position is getting the kids to work.
"When you do find those ones that do want to work," he says, "you really try to build them up, train them, and show them that you like having them around."
Clinton's Fareway was voted number one grocery store, number one meat counter and number one produce counter in this year's River Cities Choice awards but came in second to Hy-Vee in the liquor store category. Langel says they're working on that. Still, when he gets special bottles such as certain bourbons onto the shelves every once in a while, he doesn't overcharge.
"I know what people want to pay," he says, "I know what they should pay, I'm not going to overcharge them."
