Zingerman's co-founder Ari Weinzweig in front of the deli he opened 27 years ago. Photo: Zingerman's

Back in 1982, when Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw opened Zingerman's Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Mich., the food world was a much different place. Far fewer Americans knew that real Parmesan cheese did not come in a green plastic tube, or that honey came in more than the plastic-bear variety.

Though Zingerman's began its life as a simple corner deli serving traditional Jewish foods like pastrami, corned beef and noodle kugel, it soon established itself as a new breed of artisanal food store, introducing countless customers to everything from American Spoon Fruit jams to raw milk cave-aged Taleggio cheese. Today, Zingerman's has more than 500 employees and is comprised of nine businesses, including a creamery, restaurant, bakehouse, publishing house and business-training program collectively generating about $36 million every year.

Weinzweig and Saginaw have always maintained an open-book approach to their business, sharing their profit margins with employees and letting customers know exactly how important they are to Zingerman's continued success. And both have always kept an eye turned towards the future -- they've already outlined their vision for 2020, which includes, first and foremost, applying "the model of sustainability to every aspect of our work," whether that means customers, employees or the planet at large.

Ari on Tunisian food, customer loyalty and his forthcoming bacon book after the jump.
How has the specialty food trade changed since Zingerman's opened its doors in 1982?

It's changed enormously, in really good ways. What's available and what people eat has been radically elevated since 1982. Thing that were then considered strange and unusual are now available at the supermarket level. Not everybody's eating them, but they're widely available. And what's avail at the high-end level is fantastic. And generationally, it's changed, which is great: we've got 5-year-olds coming in and tasting goat cheese.

What's the most difficult or challenging part of running an independent food business?

The challenges to me are really the same as they've always been. In the food business, we do it from scratch, by hand. It's very hard to do anything, whether it's music, food or gardening, at a really high level. Nothing runs by itself so we're just continually learning and putting out better and better food, making service better and better and making it a better place to work. Back in 1982, it was just a couple of us opening [the store] and washing dishes at night, so that had its problems too. I don't think it's that different now.

What do you think drives customer and employee loyalty?

Our belief from day one has been that if we don't give our customers a reason to come in, they're not gonna come back. It's the same with employees: We need the staff more than they need us.

How do you decide which products make it onto your shelves?

We're just tasting all the time and testing recipes. There's definitely stuff we taste that's good but that we don't bring in. There's no magic way we decide; mostly we're going with if we find something that's really great.

Do you ask your customers what they think?

All the time, but we don't survey 300 people to see if they like something. We go with what we believe in and go from there. Like when we started making our own cream cheese, it's not that anyone was asking us to make it, but it was embarrassing to put out commercial cream cheese.

How do you figure out how much to charge for products?

You start with what it costs, you calculate freight and then you work out a range, a percentage set for each category and charge somewhere in that. I'd say the public's perception of profit margins in the food business are way off: People perceive that food business make money like crazy, but it's generally lower than they think. We could charge 15 to 20 percent more than what we do now, like fast-food companies. If you're paying $8 for cheese there's a reasonable assumption that someone's charging a lot of money for it, but if you go to the farm and see what goes into making the cheese, it's a bargain. Having gone and harvested wild rice, I can tell you it's worth every penny. Sure, there's a few people that are making a lot of money, but I'm guessing that most aren't.

How has your customer base changed since you opened?

We're drawing from a lot more people because we're a destination spot. We have people coming from all over now.

But unlike when you opened, those customers now have more options for where they can buy good food.

You can buy good olive oil in Kroger now, but I think what we have is better. There's also artisan bread in every supermarket, but it's usually parbaked. Saying you have something like natural starter doesn't mean it's good. A lot of stuff isn't.

Has this wider availability affected what you carry at Zingerman's?

Sure. There's stuff in the middle of the road that we don't really deal with anymore. Like Colavita olive oil: it's a really amazing thing that we still sell it but we don't promote it. It's $3 more [here] than in the grocery store because we're buying one case every three months.

You travel a lot for work -- how much of the year do you spend on the road?

I've actually never tracked it; I don't know. The truth is now with e-mail and phones it doesn't really matter. I'll be proofing stuff from San Francisco or getting work done on the plane. Somebody told me, 'you're more present when you're out of town than a lot of people are when they're here.'

So what are you excited about at Zingerman's these days?

Tunisian food like harissa and preserved lemons. It's all great, and we're selling like crazy. My Guide to Better Bacon is coming out on July 1. People incessantly ask me what the new food trends are. I make them up. What I wrote in the bacon book is that bacon is all the rage, but people don't really care because it's really good and they're going to keep eating it. It's a cool product with a cool story, and it's fun.