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agriculture & industry • community • faith & charities Education • down through the years • family & home business & health • life • neighbors • people A PUBLICATION OF THE ALBERT LEA TRIBUNE • FEBRUARY 2014
Grocery quandary solved
What was once Jamboree Foods now exists as Kiester Market, selling groceries to residents of the small town in eastern Faribault County. Drew Claussen
Kiester pulls together to find a way to keep shoppers in town
By Drew Claussen
drew.claussen@albertleatribune.com
K
IESTER — After its grocery story unexpectedly closed its doors in 2012, the people of Kiester banded together to look for other options. The closing of Jamboree Foods left Kiester residents having to drive 16 miles to Wells, 17 miles to Lake Mills, 25 miles to Albert Lea or 27 miles to Blue Earth just to purchase groceries. When it became clear that other companies didn’t have interest in opening a store, residents went out looking for pledges for a cooperative. Finally, after more than a year of hard work, the Kiester Market opened in January. “It’s a truly grass-roots project,” said organizing board member Judy Meyer. “It began in the fall of 2012 after the grocery store closed in June of 2012. That fall some of us decided that maybe we ought to try a co-op.” Meyer said Jamboree Foods
closed in Kiester with no explanation from ownership, despite being a profitable store. Stores closed in Elysian and Truman the same day. All three were owned by Elysian resident Brad Gohla. The opening of Kiester Market was a big win for a city that also saw the controversial closing of the United South Central Middle School in Kiester in June 2008. The building had served the Kiester community in one way or another since 1924. “The school closing was devastating to us, as it was to the other areas around here that lost their school,” said Kiester Mayor Jeanne Brooks. “Kiester is a nice community. We have a lot of things that a lot of other towns don’t have. We have a movie theater and a clinic and a lot of other things. So to have that grocery store makes one more service available to our residents.” The city is home to a bowling alley and the former school is a community center. Kiester lacks a convenience store, but it does have Duane’s Felco, a
service station that pumps gas and has auto repair. Monty’s also repairs cars. The city of about 500 has a weekly newspaper, a medical office, a bank, a grain elevator, two farm implement sellers, a lawn mower dealer, a farm supply store, a seed dealer, a car wash, a coinoperated laundry, a photography studio, a liquor store, a public accountant, two bar and grills, two cafes, a beauty salon, two insurance providers and a flooring store, among other business offerings. Meyer said driving to other communities to get groceries was hard on a lot of people, especially the elderly. Brooks said Kiester has around a 40 percent senior population and agreed that it was really difficult for them to get groceries during the stretch when there was no store. “I told the market group on many occasions that the endeavor was greatly appreciated because it’s a public service,” Brooks said. “A lot of people can’t go out of town when they need to go out of
town, so it’s crucial that we have this service available to them.” Brooks said they tried for months to get a company to open a store in Kiester without success. Then the community pulled together with the market group as its lead to open their own store. The Kiester Market’s building is owned by the city and leased by the cooperative. The first step the board took to getting the new cooperative was to get pledges from residents, to see if there was enough support to move forward. They collected around $65,000 in pledges, which told them that there was enough support to go forward. “Now we’re totally organized, we’re legal, we’ve hired a manager and he’s hired an assistant manager and some other staff,” Meyer said. “We have new signage up, and we have gone with the Mason Bros. of Wadena as a distributor.” Meyer said she hopes the store will also provide some part-time jobs for teenagers in
the Kiester area at some point, especially in the summer. Only full-time positions had been filled in January. The project for the Kiester Market was truly a community effort from its beginning to end, they said. Volunteers put in many hours tidying the building up after it was left in pretty rough shape when the last company left. “It hadn’t been cleaned up at all and we spent four days, almost 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. working on it,” Meyer said. “I don’t even know how many people there were, probably 25 to 30. They really came in and worked hard and got it all cleaned up. We had a man who used to be a school janitor who used four machines and got that floor looking better than we thought it ever could.” Meyer said able-bodied people helped with the manual labor and others kept the volunteers fed. “The older folks who couldn’t help brought food,” she said. “We ate better those few days than you can imagine.”
The former Kiester school functions as a community center these days.