Ten years ago, plagued by equipment failures and increasingly sluggish sales, the only grocery store in tiny Walsh, Colorado, closed its doors. But the town’s 600 residents, suddenly facing a 40-mile round trip for food, didn’t despair. Instead, they pooled their money and reopened the historic Walsh Community Grocery Store, a fixture in their town since 1928, as a community-owned store.
Today, the store is turning a profit, and has just one payment left on a $160,000 loan it used to restock and remodel. The shop’s strategy of combining smart community organizing and traditional business acumen is a model for other tiny towns struggling to maintain local grocery stores, even as dollar stores and their frozen wares take over main streets throughout rural America. Roughly 6,000 dollar stores have opened in the U.S. since 2010, according to the retail research firm Conlumino. For at least one chain, Dollar General, the large majority are in towns of 20,000 people or less — places too small for big box stores, like Wal-Mart, but perfect for a dollar store’s slightly smaller shop.
In rural communities, grocery stores — part economic driver, part community builder, and part food supplier — are key institutions, according to an analysis by the Center for Rural Affairs. But keeping them alive isn’t easy. Profit margins are low in the grocery business, and most chain stores accumulate earnings through volume. At small-scale stores like the one in Walsh, the limited clientele means limited sales and, perhaps, bankruptcy...
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