Psst brand kroger8/8/2023 That would have left Erie with only a Dollar General, a chain store with a poor selection of produce and fresh food. To find fresh meats and vegetables, residents - many of whom don’t have cars - would’ve needed to travel 10 to 20 miles out of town. So, the city council decided it would do just about anything to keep its only grocery store open. In the subsequent weeks, responses to the poll began to trickle into the Erie City Council. Of those, the vast majority, 213 people ( 68.5%), voted yes. What followed is a rare feat of community activism. To keep Stub’s Market from shuttering, the city government decided to buy it out. How Erie got its grocery storeĮrie has all the quaint charm one might expect to find in a small, middle-America town. Its main attractions include a park with dinosaurs made from junk metal and the public library. Each July, it hosts an annual soldiers’ reunion where residents cook beans in cast-iron pots over open fires, watch fireworks, and admire antique cars.Īt one time, Erie had a thriving farming community. But today, the town’s core industry has largely disappeared. “Really there’s not a lot of good jobs here,” Julie Kent, the director of Erie’s public library, told The Hustle. Please try again!ĭelivered weekdays plus a bonus Sunday feature. The main street of Erie, Kansas, circa 1906 (Kansas Historical Society) Though some farming jobs still exist, many people drive outside of town for work, most often to an airplane-parts manufacturer in the nearby town of Chanute. Like many other small towns, Erie’s population waned in tandem with the decline of farming. Between 19, the town’s official head count fell by 26%, to 1,047 residents. This population collapse had cascading impacts on local businesses in the city. With a shrinking pool of customers to serve, local stores struggled to turn a profit. ![]() That was especially true for Erie’s grocery stores. The first warning signs occurred in 2012, when the city’s only grocery store, G&W Foods, abruptly closed because it was losing so much money.įor two months, Erie didn’t have a single grocery store. Residents who couldn’t drive out of town depended on frozen meals from Dollar General. Getting fresh fruit and vegetables suddenly hinged on knowing someone who could make a delivery for them. The city convinced Stub’s Market, which had previously occupied the location, to reopen its store before the end of the year. The owners of Stub’s were looking to retire, and they couldn’t run Erie’s grocery store much longer. Stub’s Market, Erie’s only grocery store at the time (Facebook) In the late 2010s, they put their store on sale - but no one was willing to buy it. ![]() It was an intractable problem that Cindy Schoenhofer, the treasurer of Erie, learned about quickly. ![]() Schoenhofer, who works part-time for the city and part-time as a controller at a local nursing home, knew Erie couldn’t afford to let Stub’s Market go. Losing a grocery store would lead to much worse problems down the line. If there was no place in town to buy produce, future residents might not move there.
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