“So, I met this woman who drives two hours from New Hampshire to Belmont [the next town west from my home in Cambridge, Massachusetts] once a month and takes home 20 pounds of yogurt from this place.”

I was standing next to the chest press machine in my town’s community center weight room, listening to a guy who was resting between sets of bench presses. In a heartbeat, I knew he was speaking about Sophia’s Greek Pantry.

“This lady moved up to New Hampshire from Boston and introduced people to Sophia’s yogurt and now they all want it so she comes down here once a month to buy it and take it back for them. It’s like a cult.”

“Yeah,” somebody else piped up. “I wouldn’t buy my yogurt any other place.”

“Agreed,” chimed in someone else.

Mind you, we’re standing in a gym 15 miles from Sophia’s. She’s not “in the neighborhood.”

Sophia was born in Greece. Her family farmed olives and ran a butcher shop. She emigrated to the United States in 1975 to study. She bought a Greek market in 2001 and built a business to share her love of Greek and Balkan foods with Boston.

She offers ready-to-eat foods, some of which I’ve tried, all of them terrific. The yogurt, of  course. Also the  tzatziki and  the chocolate baklava in the case near the front door. What she doesn’t make, she imports from Greece – olives and olive oil (including her own), jams, cookies, chocolates, and mind-boggling varieties of canned foods and frozen foods.

As local Greek families prepare for their holidays, store aisles are packed, shopping baskets overflowing. But, even on slow days, there’s almost always a line at the back of the store at the yogurt counter because people come for Sophia’s yogurt – multiple flavors, hand packed to order in half-pound, 1-pound, 2-pound, eight-pound, and larger sizes. The 2% plain yogurt tastes and spreads like soft cream cheese. If you say “Sophia’s” to people in the area who know about her or the store, “yogurt” is their reply. And now, at least one person we know of drives two hours once a month to supply her neighbors!

And often, as I watch this scene from my place in the yogurt line at the back of the store, I think: “What a draw this is” and “what comes to mind when people hear our names?” Why would anyone think to recommend us to clients or friends…or drive two hours to see us?

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage Corporation. Clarity assists banks and credit unions to develop more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.