It’s been located at a critical intersection within the city of Port Townsend for more than four decades, but Penny Saver Mart owner Roger Ramey noted that he still gets customers who have lived in town for 10, 15, even 20 years without knowing about the store.

Ramey and his father, James, took over the establishment at 2140 E. Sims Way in 1981, and by 1987, James had retired to leave the running of the Penny Saver Mart to Roger.

“My dad decided to try his hand at the stock market, playing as a day-trader,” Ramey chuckled.

The Rameys originally moved to Port Townsend from Florence, Oregon, after James had already acquired and operated 17 grocery stores, and Roger had grown up working his way up from the bottom in those stores, by sweeping, cleaning and stocking shelves.

“I like the people in this town,” said Roger Ramey, whose conversations are amiable but brisk. “I enjoy greeting the customers. It’s just good all around.”

Ramey was described as “a man of few words” by former KIRO Newsradio features reporter Rachel Belle, and yet, she devoted an entire story to the Penny Saver Mart’s sandwiches on KIRO 97.3 FM in 2017.

The Penny Saver Mart is stocked with chips, candy and other prepackaged snacks, along with sodas and other bottled beverages, plus a spinner-rack of paperbacks. Ramey told Belle in 2017 that the store offered 28 different types of sandwiches and sold between 500 to 700 sandwiches a day.

In 2024, Ramey told The Leader that the Penny Saver’s deli continues to be one of its primary draws, between its salads, its pizzas and, of course, its sandwiches, including the beloved “mighty bites.”

“Depending on what day it is, we might sell 80 poor boy sandwiches, or 80 Reubens,” Ramey said. “It always changes with the foot traffic we happen to get. But everybody knows that, whatever sandwich they order, it’ll be made well and fresh.”

Customers respond positively to the store’s offerings, but Ramey has also heard their less-positive reactions to the installation of a roundabout at the intersection of East Sims Way and Kearney Street, which a number of his customers have told him they now avoid.

“You hear a lot of honking horns here,” Ramey said, “and we’ve had more cars cutting through our parking lot.”

Ramey believes the Penny Saver Mart’s business is mostly back to where it was before the onset of COVID in 2020, but suspects the earlier-in-the-day closures of restaurants post-pandemic cut into foot traffic that was once the norm into the evenings.

“We used to get more cooks and waitresses at the ends of their shifts, later at night,” Ramey said.

Even in the face of a global pandemic, the Penny Saver Mart’s business has remained remarkably stable over the years, according to Ramey. He estimated he’s employed roughly 100 people since he and his father started running the business, including Roger’s adult sons.

“We have good crews,” Ramey said. “They make sure to take care of our customers, so we make sure to take care of them. That leads to less turnover.”

He concluded, “Bottom line, we greet folks as they come in, and serve them the best we can.”