Adapting with the times.
That's a good way to describe how Pay Way Feed Store on Jefferson Street has stayed in business since opening in 1950.
Brian Meller started working in the store that his father opened when he was 10 after he got off from school.
"I'd come in and clean the store - sweep the floors, clean the shelves - and I just kept going from there," he said.
Meller said Pay Way has a lot of regular customers who he's known all his life.
"The ability to get to know your customers on a personal basis is a plus," he said. "My father always said that people that come in here can go somewhere else. Other stores can sell those items, but we sell our service and that's what's nice. When people walk in we make sure to speak with them, try to help them and get them in and out as fast as we can."
The city has grown around the store, but it hasn't always been at its current location.
When the store opened in 1950 it was in the area where the Whitton Expressway is now. They moved in 1958 and have been there ever since.
"It's a unique neighborhood," Meller said. "A lot of people just think its still cattle and hog feed we sell. They've driven by for years and never thought what we have was in there."
The business went from selling primarily cattle feed to more as Meller calls it "hobby farm" items.
"We have a lot of pet products, grass seed, things we didn't sell years ago we do now," he said. "Once they started to raise hogs and cattle in confinement operations on bigger farms we started bringing the seeds of the smaller animals. It wasn't hard to change, but we had to do something to keep up with what was going on. We started selling for farmers, now we sell flashlights and blue bird houses, a whole variety of things we never had before."
That includes chickens.
"We used to sell more in the past, but still it's quite a few," Meller said. "Some do get them for their egg production, but many get them just for the novelty of having them."
Brian's son Alex has been working at the store since he was 14 and has stayed working there as he continues going to college at MU.
"Having the business stay in the family is important," Meller said. "We still go by my dad's business saying - We can't sell them on prices, but can sell them on service."