Personal service store's hallmark

Sunset Foods isn't a big national chain, but it has made an impact on the North and Northwest suburban grocery business.

Sunset is a 70-year-old family-owned gourmet grocery chain with stores in Highland Park, Northbrook, Libertyville and Lake Forest. A fifth grocery is planned for Long Grove.

The new stores are a far cry from the first tiny meat store that opened in Highwood in 1937. The older generations of the family that came from northern Italy decided to try their hands at something other than bricklaying, landscaping and day labor.

Today, the high-end chain is noted for its wide variety of goods, and it offers cooking classes and a catering service.

Another hallmark is that each store has at least one family member working there. They greet customers at the door and ensure shoppers find what they're looking for.

One cousin, Ron Bernardi, greets shoppers at the Northbrook store pulling carts out so they don't have to wrestle with them.

Bernardi says the family chose the store's name after seeing a particularly beautiful sunset.

"It was a sign from God," says Bernardi, who says he was raised from infancy in the stores.

"My mother was stacking potatoes the day I was born, in August of 1943," he said.

Bernardi says Sunset has no plans to sell to a larger chain and the family takes great pride in the fact that they have never laid off any employees.

"They are like family," he says.