Point Reyes Light - September 28, 2000
Palace Market owner sells store to daughter
The owner of West Marin's only supermarket, the Palace Market, this week revealed she has sold the store.
Dorothy Kotula of Inverness told The Light she was forced by knee problems to sell the business to her adult daughter Mary Frances Rocca of Napa.
"For the moment," Kotula said, she will retain ownership of the 11,000-square-foot building, which designer Alex Riley of Inverness Park remodeled for her in 1989.
Already Rocca has polished the market's floors to where they gleam. She plans to replace the store's septic system in "a couple of weeks," meaning that the parking lot will be temporarily torn up. "I hope to keep that as short as possible," she said.
Professional training Ironically, neither mother nor daughter were educated to run businesses. Kotula was trained as a medical technician and worked in the field for more than 10 years in South Dakota, Minnesota, San Francisco, and Santa Rosa.
Before buying the Palace Market in 1973, she and her former husband Carlo Rocca operated a wig shop in Santa Rosa. But the market proved to be her true love. "I really enjoyed the grocery business," she said in an interview Tuesday. "I enjoyed the people very much and watching children grow up."
Her daughter also received professional training. Because she was a good student in high school, it was assumed that "to use my potential to the fullest, you go into the sciences," she explained Wednesday.
She graduated from Boston University's Dental School and later was accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, which at the time was a fairly rare accreditation.
Commute from Napa After operating a dental practice in Rochester, Minnesota, Rocca moved to Napa and opened a practice. She and her husband of 15 years Eric, a pain-management physician, have four children, three girls and a boy, and she plans to commute daily from Napa to Point Reyes Station.
The drive takes an hour, and "it's all backroads, so it's very good," she said. "I bought a bunch of tapes - not all music. Today, I listened to customer-service tapes."
She also has tapes to improve her Spanish and increase her vocabulary in that language.
At the same time, Rocca said, she will help her employees - many of whom are Latinos - learn more English and will pass along to them any tips about customer service she learns from her tapes.
Customer service As part of her customer service, Rocca said, "I'm hoping the community will communicate with me. I'll listen openly and do what I can."
The biggest problem she faces, Rocca said, is to make West Marin residents realize that many of the Palace Market's prices are lower than those at chain supermarkets in East Marin. (Spot checks by The Light confirmed her claim.)
Given that chain supermarkets buy in bulk, one would expect their prices to be lower - especially with discount-club cards and other sales gimmicks.
"I guess they're making a bunch more money than we do," said Rocca. Her mother added that the Palace Market belongs to a group of independent markets called United Grocers, which also buys in bulk, so the store's per-unit costs are also low.
Besides shinier floors and a new septic system, what does Rocca foresee for the Palace? "New lighting," the grocer added. "I want the store to be lighter. And new frozen-food cases." She also wants to get involved in community affairs she added.
Kotula's influence And what does Kotula see in her future? "I know it's going to be a good feeling, but I'm having a hard time letting go," she answered. "It's been 28 years."
One reason may be that the store reflects so much of Kotula herself. Proud of her Polish heritage, she hung a Polish chandelier near the entrance and installed Polish lightning rods on the roof when the store was remodeled.
Perhaps the least recognized bit of Polish-American culture in the Palace is the railing over the deli counter. It once was the communion rail for the Polish-Catholic church of her childhood in Browerville, Minnesota.
In the short term, she will travel to the Mayo Clinic in late November to have her knees examined. She said her medical problem began about 10 years ago when she tripped over a rug.
By this year, she explained, it was difficult for her to regularly go back and forth between the store's upstairs office and its main floor.
Meanwhile, the Palace's former manager Dave Arcado has bought the Oakmont Market in Santa Rosa.
As for Rocca running her own business, she said, "I'm liking the challenge of it. I'm liking that my brain is having to work harder than it has
in the [recent] past."