Lara and Jerry Amodei, owners of Carcieri’s Market on Charles Street, Providence, have owned the market since 1976. Wal-Mart is moving to the area and may affect their business.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE — On a weekday afternoon at Carcieri’s Market on Charles Street, Karen Pilla is buying groceries. Pilla stops by this small family-owned grocery store every day on her way home from work to pick out what she’ll have for dinner. As her items are checked out, the cashier, Marguerite Carrera, looks up at Pilla and says:

“This is not your usual time of day.”

Pilla nods, smiling.

“I am little early today,” she says as she picks up her bag and makes her way toward the door.

It’s a small exchange but, according to Pilla, it’s important and it’s why she chooses to shop at Carcieri’s.

“I come here every day,” She says. “I’m very comfortable here. They know a bit about me, and I know something about them.”

At a time when high-volume, low-price chain stores dominate the American retail landscape, local shops such as Carcieri’s can seem like an anachronism. But according to those who run these small businesses, it’s that old-world feeling and attention to specific customer needs that allows stores like Carcieri’s to survive the big-box competition and keep providing jobs to their employees.

While it’s generally accepted that retail giants such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot or Target can drive out some local businesses when they move into an area, in effect forcing people to lose their jobs, these large employers also create potentially hundreds of new positions to staff new stores. The net effect these changes have on a regional economy’s labor market is still up for debate.

Elena Irwin, an associate professor of economics at Ohio State University, said the research regarding small retailers and stores like Wal-Mart is crystal clear. “Small retailers get driven out of business when Wal-Mart moves into town,” she said. “The research on the overall effect of Wal-Mart on jobs is mixed. There is the possibility of a significant loss of jobs or a modest increase after five years. Communities shouldn’t expect a net increase in jobs because a Wal-Mart moves to town.”

But, for the owners of the locally owned businesses that compete with the country’s retail giants, as well as for their employees, figuring out the net effect isn’t what’s important. They want to hold onto their jobs, and to do it they have to figure out just what they are capable of doing better than the big-box stores.

That’s precisely what Lara Amodei, who owns Carcieri’s along with her husband, said she is trying to figure out. Wal-Mart plans on opening a 135,000-square-foot discount store off Silver Spring Street, a short drive from Carcieri’s. The new discount Wal-Mart store will sell nearly all the dry foods, cleaning supplies and household goods that are now sold at Carcieri’s and probably, according to Amodei, at a much cheaper price.

“They will definitely run their prices lower than us,” she said. “We can’t buy at the prices they buy at. We know what it takes to run our business, and we know their moving in will have an effect.”

The 6,400-square-foot Carcieri’s, with its tightly packed six aisles, employs 24 people. Most of the store’s nine full-time employees work behind the market’s full-service fresh meat counter, which Amodei said provides nearly 49 percent of the operation’s business. The store was bought by the Amodeis in 1976 from the Carcieri family (cousins of the governor, according to the current owners) who had run the business for three generations. Since then, the store has weathered the arrival of a Stop & Shop, as well as a number of additional convenience stores, and has still managed to hold on to its customers.

“Every time one of the major chains opens, in the beginning it draws away some of our business,” Amodei said. “It’s curiosity. But, after a while, our customers come back. We’re known for our meat department. We have people who come in all the way from Newport just for our meats. That’s our niche.”

The new Wal-Mart won’t have meats or a produce department. Amodei thinks that difference should keep her in business. But, if it doesn’t, she knows where she’ll have to make up for the lost sales. “We’ll reduce hours for our employees,” she said. “We’ll have to adjust our overhead.”

Down Route 95 in Coventry, Tom’s Market, another locally owned grocery store, is adjusting to increased competition from the Wal-Mart in town that’s expanding to a full range of groceries. Tom’s employs 30 people, about one-third of whom work full-time. The 7,000-square-foot store, according to Glenn Place, the manager, has been trying to figure out how to adjust to the expanded Wal-Mart since employees found out about the change about two years ago.

“We were all concerned, so we sat down, and we talked about it,” Place said. “We looked at the situation and said ‘Hey, we can do this.’ What we’ve done is decide to concentrate heavily on prepared foods and the catering end of the business. We felt that with Wal-Mart expanding, if we concentrated on prepared foods, we could branch away from what they were doing.”

Just looking at the numbers, the difference between a job at Wal-Mart and a job at a Carcieri’s or Tom’s Market is not that great. The majority of employees at all these stores work part-time, or under 40 hours per week, and earn less than $10 per hour. While Wal-Mart will not disclose its Rhode Island average hourly wage, nationally, the company said, employees earn an average of $10.11 an hour. Starting hourly wages for employees at Wal-Mart in Rhode Island are the same as the starting wage at Tom’s or Carcieri’s: $7.50, the minimum wage starting January next year. The Wal-Mart figure was obtained from applicants for jobs at the new Coventry store.

The key difference, according to Charlie Rogers, the manager at the expanding Coventry Wal-Mart, is that working for a big company gives employees room to grow.

“The key point is that you can begin a career at a Wal-Mart store and get promoted through the ranks,” Rogers said. “We’re particularly looking for people who want to make a career out of working in retail. Who want to stay in this business.”

Rogers himself is a good example of the changes that have occurred in regional economies as national chains have become more dominant. Rogers has worked at Rhode Island retail chains Ann & Hope and Apex. He decided to move to Wal-Mart, he said, because the opportunities were better.

For Kevin Pomfret, who started at Wal-Mart as a carriage pusher four years ago and is now a shift manager, the opportunities presented by working at the world’s largest retailer are tremendous. “This is a company where if you do what is asked of you, you’ll do fine,” Pomfret said. “A lot of people who start don’t think it’s something they will stay with, but if you do stay, you can move up. I’d like to run my own store someday.”

Given Wal-Mart’s size, Pomfret’s ambition is a real possibility. The company says that 76 percent of its managers are former hourly wage employees.

But room to grow in a big company is not what every employee seeks. Some just like working for a small company or business where they know the owners and the owners know them.

“I wouldn’t want to work at a store where I don’t know the owner’s name,” Carrera said. “I would never leave [Carcieri’s] to go work for someone else. They are not just a business, they are like my family.”