Family-owned grocery changes hands, continues to serve rural Missouri community

Three days after Jordan and Megan Branstetter took ownership of the local grocery store in Perry, a tornado swept through the area and cut off the northeast Missouri town’s power for close to a week.

The generator was acting strange, and the store’s coolers wouldn’t start. By the end of their first week as business owners, the couple had to throw away around $25,000 worth of spoiled food.

“Then a month later, we had somebody drive (a car) through the front of the building,” Jordan Branstetter recalled. “So the first couple months were kind of rough, but we made it.”

Branstetter attributed the couple's ability to overcome those early hurdles as owners of Hickman's IGA to the support the couple received from the Perry community. After the storm, several of the town’s residents showed up with brooms and mops to help clean the store, and the local ice company parked a truck out front in hopes of saving what they could.

“It seems like they’ve had one challenge after another, and they just keep facing all those challenges and moving forward,” said Perry resident and IGA customer Amber Kesler. “The community just continues to support them, too, which I think is amazing.”

A year later, most of the challenges have evened out for the Branstetters. They’ve found a solid staff, and they’ve come to know their customers “like family.” The biggest challenges now are those facing rural grocery stores nationwide: declining customer bases and increased competition from surrounding supercenters and dollar stores.

“I love the grocery business. It’s one of those businesses where it’s never going to go away because people always need to eat,” Jordan Branstetter said. “In rural communities, though, it’s a little bit harder.”

From one family to another

Before the Branstetters took ownership of the store last summer, it had been owned by the Hickman family for over 60 years. The Perry location was the family’s first, although at one point they had seven stores across the region. It served as a community staple, and it’s where many local kids got their first job in high school.

“(That store) supported my family and many other families that lived in the community,” said longtime owner Steve Hickman, who originally took over the store just out of high school. “Overall, it was a very good experience.”

About 10 years ago, however, Steve and his brother Jim were beginning to consider retirement. Jim was a bit older and sold some of the stores he managed first over an eight-year period. Eventually, all that was left was the Perry location.

Over time, the brothers received a couple offers from people who wanted to buy the land or repurpose the building into something else. The brothers turned them down.

“We were determined to find somebody that would keep it going as a grocery store,” Steve Hickman said. “That was our No. 1 goal. … We wanted to keep it open for the community.”

Community members wanted it to stay a grocery store as well. As news circulated that the store was for sale, some anxiety swirled within the community. Without Hickman's IGA, the closest grocery store was at least 25 minutes away. The only other options in town were a gas station, a couple restaurants and a Dollar General.

“There was stress, like ‘What if we don’t have a grocery store?’” Kesler said. “My husband and I aren’t super big planners on grocery shopping for the whole week or buying out of town. … It would have been very challenging for us, but it would have been so challenging for so many other families also.”

That’s why there was a sense of excitement and relief when the Branstetters bought the location. A Facebook post from the area chamber of commerce about the store’s “Grand Re-Opening” garnered about 60 engagements on Facebook — a number equivalent to about 8% of the town.

“(Jordan and Megan) have really proven themselves,” Steve Hickman said of the transition. “They’ve gotten to know the community real well, and it was just the perfect choice.”

Broader challenges for smaller stores

Small, rural grocers like the Hickmans and Branstetters face a particular host of challenges in running their business. Since rural grocers operate in more sparsely populated areas, there’s a smaller customer base to begin with. On top of that, there is intense competition from bigger brands that has shuttered a lot of smaller grocers.

“Since we were a small, family-owned store, you know, we didn't have the clout that the bigger stores had,” Steve Hickman said of his experience working in Perry. “Back in those days, Walmart was really coming on strong … and they’ve grown so fast and so quick, and they took a lot of business from small-town grocery stores.”

In rural counties nationwide, grocery stores have declined while dollar stores and supercenters have steadily increased, according to data from the USDA Economic Research Center. While single-location grocers currently make up a larger percentage of stores in rural areas, their market share has been steadily decreasing for decades.

This trend is apparent in Perry, which had three grocery stores when Steve Hickman's father, Bob, bought the Perry location. Now, Hickman’s is the only one left, and a Dollar General has moved in down the road. The grocery store in the neighboring town of Center, which has population of about 450, closed in 2013 as well.

And when grocery stores close, customers have to drive farther to get the food they need. Hickman’s IGA is the only grocer in Ralls County. Without it, Perry residents would have to drive out to Paris, Mexico or Hannibal — all at least 25 minutes away.

Not everyone can make that drive.

“There’s a lot of elderly folks here and low-income people, who — especially with gas prices right now — … they either can’t drive or they can’t afford to drive that far out,” said Jordan Branstetter, who will sometimes have groceries delivered to elderly customers who can’t get out to shop.

As small town grocery stores close, the likelihood grows for food deserts, or areas where people don’t have consistent access to fresh, healthy food. Despite many rural residents working on farms to feed American consumers, they can have a hard time getting food for themselves: About 18% of food-insecure households are in rural areas, according to ERS data.

In part thanks to Hickman's IGA, Ralls County residents are more food secure on average than many other rural areas, with 11.5% of residents being food insecure compared to 14.2% statewide. But other rural Missouri counties aren’t as fortunate, with many counties in the Bootheel having food uncertainty levels of up to 23%, according to data from the Missouri Hunger Atlas from the University of Missouri's Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security.

“That’s why I think it’s so important to have a grocery store in rural, northeast Missouri,” Jordan Branstetter said. “Because (sometimes) there’s nowhere else to go.”

The Perry difference

Branstetter said there were a couple things about Perry that made him think the grocery store would succeed despite the challenges facing small grocers. For one thing, the town sits close to Mark Twain Lake, which draws thousands of tourists each summer. Considering Perry is a town of 760 people, this means there’s a huge influx of customers (and revenue) each summer.

It’s also located farther away from Walmarts and other shopping options compared to other Ralls County cities, meaning Perry residents are less likely to drive to somewhere like Hannibal or Mexico to do their shopping. This helps with customer retention.

Most importantly, however, Branstetter said he knew how far Perry residents would go to support their local businesses. When he lived outside of Perry in the past, he spent several years at the town’s fire department and visited Hickman’s often for lunch and snacks. At that time, he said it was clear how much residents appreciated and supported the store, and that made him feel confident in taking it over.

“If it had been in any other town than Perry, we wouldn’t have even looked at it,” he said. “But Perry is just kind of a special place. … They just really support their community.”

When the couple took over, they tried to make some positive changes to the store to help obtain and retain customers. After the storm, they made renovations, updated the lighting and added an on-tap soda machine, which Jordan Branstetter said is a common offering at grocery stores in the South.

They’ve also kept up with old favorites like the deli’s lunch specials, while adding in a coffee and tea bar for the early risers. The Branstetters will try to order what they can for customers with special wants or needs, and they bring in new products from time to time.

But most importantly to the new owners, they have worked to maintain the personable feel of the store. Large box stores treat customers like numbers or transactions, Jordan Branstetter said, whereas smaller stores treat them like family. From the very start, his goal has been to know each customer’s name, and now a year later he chats genially with customers as they walk in. And he calls each of them by name.

“Your local stores are the ones who donate to your baseball team, or 4H and FFA,” Branstetter said, making his case for shopping at locally owned stores. “You’re not paying a CEO’s million-dollar salary, you’re paying for my boy’s baseball cleats.”