Chains, pandemic cited among reasons for Story City Market closure
Story City is soon to lose its local grocery store, a business venture that left the owners with a sour taste about the industry and another example of the trend of local markets shuttering across rural America.
The closure of the Story City Market could mean the people of this town of about 3,300 residents will have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food. Such places are known as “food deserts.”
David and Wendy Wooldridge will close the grocery store they bought in 2017 on Aug. 23. The owners said the coronavirus pandemic, the arrival of Dollar General in town and nearby cities’ grocery chains have forced them to close after years of work with little financial gain.
“We didn’t ever have a lot of money,” David Wooldridge said. What they did have was all poured into the store, he said.
“Now we have nothing, and you have a community that is okay with letting that happen,” Wooldridge said.
Fittingly off of Market Avenue, where it intersects with Washington Street, sits a tan-sided building that houses the Story City Market — apparent from its big, red sign. Now, in the last month in business, the eight-aisle store, formerly named Harlan’s Food Market, has more shelves empty than not.
Those with items to sell advertise big savings, befitting for a store going out of business.
The issues the Story City Market faced are not unique to their town. Iowa lost almost half of its grocery stores from 1995 to 2005, according to the Center for Rural Affairs; 43% of Iowa towns under 1,000 in population lost their grocery stores.
There once were three groceries, will there be even one in the future?
Story City has always had an in-town grocery store of some kind, Story County History Museum Director Kate Feil said. At one point, three shops competed around Main Street.
In the 1960s, Harlan Dubansky opened a food market that would later become Harlan’s, Feil said. By the mid-1970s, Dubansky built and moved his business to the space that would one day house Story City Market.
The shop exchanged hands after Dubansky decided to sell, and David and Wendy Wooldridge purchased the store after the former owners, who were friends of theirs, decided to sell. The couple previously owned local grocery stores in Manson and Rockwell City which met similar fates to Story City Market.
With their local grocery store closing, all three towns faced becoming food deserts.
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture identified 6,500 food deserts across the U.S. Its report, released in 2017, found 19 million people — 6.2% of the U.S. population — had limited access to a supermarket or grocery store.
Fareway broke ground in July of this year on a Rockwell City store. The Manson market’s closure sparked a movement to bring a new local grocery store. A year after Manson’s local grocery store closed its doors, the nonprofit Manson Hometown Grocery opened its doors.
David Wooldridge said one person expressed interest in purchasing the Story City Market but could not offer enough money.
Story City Mayor Mike Jensen said conversations with different companies that could bring a new grocery store to town are “progressing nicely.”
“It’s a loss and we realize that,” Jensen said. “We’re working on it and have been for a while.”
The feasibility of another locally owned grocery store in Story City is bleak, grocery store analyst David J. Livingston said. The market has drastically changed in the last 30 years.
“It’s Charles Darwin running the market,” Livingston said. “It’s survival of the fittest … This is happening in small towns all over the country.”
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Local efforts to bring groceries back
Members of other small communities have taken it upon themselves to change their food desert status. A couple who brought the local grocery business back to Manning is now deploying food lockers to other food deserts around Iowa.
“It only works if you have the right people in there that really care,” Wooldridge said. He said not a lot of people are willing to put in the “blood, sweat and tears” required to open a food market and sustain it.
At the start of their time owning Story City Market, the Wooldridges planned to bring new items to their aisles and lower prices, though their prices would not satisfy much of the Story City clientele. Even in 2017, David Wooldridge told the Ames Tribune the competition was steep with nearby grocery store giants Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee.
A grocery store needs an average turn, or sale, of $40 per customer, Wooldridge said. As customers began predominately shopping at bigger chains, the Story City Market average turn decreased to $12 or $13.
That shows people mainly use the store to pick up the items they forgot during their main grocery hauls, he said.
Wendy Wooldridge said with their base of loyal customers came many who complained to the couple about their prices. Some of the remarks were hard not to take personally, she said.
“Every day, come into work, someone’s in your face about how high your prices are,” she said. “It’s very frustrating to have a job like that where nobody appreciates what you have and what you’re trying to provide.
“You think, after a while, you kind of get callous to the criticism and, but it still hurts.”
David Wooldridge said costs could only go so low since the smaller store pays more to deliver and store smaller product orders.
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Competition from bigger chains
“The big problem with these little communities is Dollar General,” Wooldridge said. “Anytime Dollar General comes in, you’re pretty much doomed.”
Dollar General officials did not respond to a request for comment.
As COVID-19 was a fatal blow for community grocery stores like Story City Market — simply speeding up the inevitable, Wooldridge said — Dollar General opened 1,000 new stores in 2020, according to Slate.
The chain with roots beginning with the Great Depression has a history of flourishing during times of struggle.
As local general stores went out of business due to the economic downturn, Dollar General Founder J.L. Turner purchased their merchandise and sold them to department stores, according to Slate. Eventually, he and his son opened retail locations which would eventually become Dollar Generals.
During the 2008 recession, Dollar General once again flourished during rough economic times.
Livingston said while Dollar General does not sell a very high volume, they sell just enough to push already-struggling markets out of business.
“They sell really cheap dry groceries,” Livingston said. “They’re going to be selling a lot cheaper than what your local grocer can.”
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What’s next for Story City?
Studies have linked the loss in proximity to healthy foods to obesity and other health issues in food deserts. With Ames 20 minutes away and most having access to cars, Livingston said this will likely not be an issue for Story City.
Slim’s Country Market also sells fresh produce in Story City from April to late October. Outside of these months, some of the older population in Story City may not have the mobility to do their shopping in Ames.
“There were some very dedicated customers, the older generation, for the most part, that really didn’t have another option,” Wendy Wooldridge said. “I will feel really really bad for them because those were the people that were our loyal customers.”
Livingston said as the elderly become more tech-savvy with each generation, this may not be an issue with the growing popularity of grocery delivery services. One impact of losing the local business like Story City market will be the loss of tax dollars spent in city limits, as more people go to Ames for their shopping, he said.
“A lot of it’s going to go to the convenience store or the Dollar General,” Livingston said. “So you’re not going to lose all those tax dollars.”
David Wooldridge looks around to fellow local grocery stores around Iowa and sees his fate as inevitable for them, he said.
“It’s the same thing that happened in Manson the same thing that happened in Rockwell,” Wooldridge said. “Will it get better? No, it won’t because all of us have went down, down, down. All of us. The community that used to support these stores, that community has gone.”
Danielle Gehr is a politics and government reporter for the Ames Tribune. She can be reached by email at [email protected], phone at (515) 663-6925 or on Twitter at @Dani_Gehr.
