Community Shopper’s Guide eyes return to mailboxes after brief print interruption
Published 12:00 am Saturday, May 6, 2023
Residents long accustomed to receiving Cullman’s Community Shopper’s Guide might’ve noticed the long-running publication missing from their mailboxes in recent weeks.
The “Shopper,” as it’s often called in local conversation, has momentarily moved its advertising to an online-only format while sorting out a temporary snag in its printed mail-out editions, owner Doug Warren explained to The Times on Friday. But, he added, that’s a temporary measure that soon will be resolved.
“We’ve had to go online for the past few weeks for a couple of different reasons,” Warren said. “But we should be back in the mail, hopefully the week after next.”
The Shopper’s brief lapse in mail-outs has prompted at least some confusion among expectant recipients about whether the longtime business is shutting down. Warren laughs when presented with that possibility, assuring that the Shopper isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“We’re not going out of business — I hope!” he joked, noting that The Community Shopper’s Guide has operated continuously in Cullman since Warren first started the publication 42 years ago.
“I had been down in south Alabama working at a place before, and there was a ‘shopper’ down there,” he said. “It wasn’t quite like the one we have here. But I just said to myself, ‘One of these days, I’m going to start one of them up somewhere else.’ So when I came to Cullman, I did.”
Operating out of its brick-and-mortar location along First Avenue Southwest in Cullman, Warren said the Shopper reaches an estimated 21,700 mailboxes with every printing, earning revenue not through edition sales (the Shopper’s Guide is free to take and read), but through the sale of advertising.
While the Shopper’s Guide works through the momentary hiccups in its mail-out editions, Warren the doors are open and “we’re there, usually until about lunch time each day.”