MUNCH THiS!

Munch This: A Sober Look at Everyone’s Favorite Convenience Store

The hike to Munchie Mart can be a challenge, be it from a Vampire-themed Valentine’s Day Party on Forbes Street, a Zombie Bride Festival on Davis, or even from as close as one of Kalamazoo College’s dorms.

The walk often requires intense focus, chanting the grocery list, or just a single word—cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes—to ensure one’s quest is successful.

“You focus on walking in a straight line, deciding which homeless people to avoid (the answer is all of them), and remembering which light means walk,” says Colin King K’11.

“Drunk people are very focused on their tobacco,” he goes on. In the three minutes Colin, and most other Munchie patrons spend in the store, the mission is easily fulfilled. “You know what you’re going to get when you finally get there,” he says.

But door opened and door closed, that’s just one side of Munchie Mart.

Stepping behind the shop’s tall, forest green counters, Paul, 23, and Will, 26, are vested with the authority and responsibility to dispense two of America’s few legal drugs: cigarettes and alcohol. Both men work two jobs and attend Western Michigan University full time; they’re busy, and on Friday night, five hours into their shifts, they’re peppy.

Sounds from the east side of the state, more specifically Comerica Park, spill through the store’s cobwebbed overhead speakers, and though loud, perhaps unnecessarily so, patrons are rung up and shuffled in and out with great efficiency and order.

Once through Munchie’s Plexiglas door, the one donned in stickers reminding patrons of the legal age and proudly announcing that the store accepts food stamps, a whole new world of sugary sweets, beer, beer, beer, and liquor appears.

Ask any of the many men and women who walk out with a thirty pack of chilled PBR, Red Dog, or Keystone, Munchie’s pièce de résistance is its walk-in fridge.
With its low ceiling and crowded shelves, its heavily postered walls and windows, stepping inside the fridge is an experience. It’s getting out, according to Paul and Will, that proves a challenge for many of Munchie’s already-inebriated customers.

For help out of the fridge, officially dubbed the “Beer Tank” by a Miller Lite banner, the room’s single door sports a user-friendly, eye-level sticker reading: “PUSH.” As if not conspicuous enough, the message is hammered home by a white handprint beneath it, ensuring that non-English speakers and those with blurred vision are not discriminated against, or worse, trapped.

“It’s called the Beer Cave,” Paul scoffs, offering an insider’s perspective. “Miller Lite needs to get it right.”

Whether a fridge, a closet, a tank, or a cave, its door, like those on the ice cooler, is often left open by distracted patrons rushing back to their porch, living room, or dorm.

When two unnaturally orange, spandex-clad women in their early twenties, stumbling and giggly, approach Munchie’s register, they ask for a fifth of bottom shelf booze. Generic College Girl A hands over a shiny plastic ID, and trying to trip her up, Will asks what her zip code is. “49003”—she’s a local and she knows the answer.

Will laughs. “And what state do you live in?” he asks, but before she can answer, his counterpart, Paul, chimes in, “Insanity! I live in a state of insanity!”

And he’s right, but it’s working for them.

Shortly thereafter, just around 10:30, there’s a rush at Munchie Mart. It’s raining outside, and many patrons arrive soaked, but like Colin, they’re on a high-stakes expedition and feeling no pain.

A middle-aged man with intensely unfocused pupils teeters in, leaning forward, his body at a seventy-degree angle with the tiled floor. He’s dressed in a cut-off sleeve tee shirt, wearing a brown vest, and looking utterly removed from reality. Gazing toward a rainbow of beer bottles, he misses the green rugs rolled out for the weather, and he trips, rolls the rug up, and continues on. If he so much as noticed the misstep, he shows no sign of it—but, would you? He buys his booze and leaves.

Another pair of college women arrive and purchase their 6-pack of Coors, but not without Paul first asking if they’re driving; he’s concerned, and with good reason.

The store’s motto, “BIG enough to serve you, SMALL enough to care,” hangs in the background, appearing on indistinct poster board and looking to be the product of an unmotivated elementary school child. Still, its message rings true.

“We’re not driving, but we are drunk,” replies the more rambunctious of the two. With brown paper bag in hand, they give a little cheer on the way out the door: “Beer pong here we come!”

But keeping the shelves stocked and ringing up purchases are only part of the job. After encountering enough drunken patrons who drive to Munchie only to try to buy more alcohol, Paul and Will see their responsibility to look out for the customer as a big part of the job too.

Around 11, a scraggly-haired twenty-two year old, a regular, swings open the door and beelines toward the forties.

“This guy buys for minors,” Paul declares shamelessly. The kid laughs, shakes his head nervously, and continues on his way. “And he knows every time he comes him here I’m going to try to get him to admit it,” Paul goes on.

With no serious response from the accused, Will takes a turn; “He buys about ten forties, and he drops bottles,” he says.

With faux indignation, he kid denies the accusations and approaches the register braced with a single 22-ounce Miller Lite—innocent at least for tonight.

Munchie Mart owner, Tom Berry, has taken an active stance against underage drinking by rewarding his employees with $10 for every fake ID confiscated. The homemade IDs then make their way into Munchie’s box of shame, but often not without tears and protest from former owners.

Just before midnight, an older man comes in, walks to the counter with two forties, and slurs something about a deal he heard on the radio. “You heard it, didn’t ya?,” he asks. But Paul’s heard it all before. No one, especially not this guy, is going to pull the wool over his eyes. The man laughs—he’s been caught. He pays for his malt liquor, and he leaves.

Paul and Will know some of the regulars by name, but Paul says he remembers faces better. Handing over a fifth of Smirnoff, Will warns its new owner to “drink slowly.” He’s seen her at her worst.

If the guys had alter egos, they say they might be Rocky and Bullwinkle (Will’s got dibs on the former), Simon and Garfunkel, or Adolf and Mussolini. Though they do strive to keep the customer satisfied, ruling with an iron fist takes top priority.

Rumor has it there’s a baseball bat behind the counter, but rumor has it wrong. There used to be, according to Will, but “we’d want to use it too much,” he says with a laugh.


With closing time growing nearer, Paul and Will throw on the heavy metal music. Loud. The genre has been statistically proven to get customers out of the store quicker. Sure, every once in a while the plan backfires, but largely, it’s successful.

In between the monotony of fulfilling work responsibilities, the guys like to laugh, control the radio (CCR and The Flaming Lips play second string to the metal), prank call the other Munchie, and to see the clock strike 1:45am—the time they finally get to lock the door, cash out the registers, and ignore lingering sass from old drunks banging on the window and ill-coordinated college students looking for more, more.

For Paul and Will, the Munchie Mart experience is way more than three minutes.