The End of The Local Market

I've posted before about the local market in the small town where I work. It was the store that charged $7.99 for a jar of mayo you could buy for $3.00 at the larger grocery store. It was the type of place that did a booming lunch business at the deli counter and stocked the items that you would would need to fill some gaps and save yourself a trip to "town" for things like a jar of mayo or TP.   The sad part of the story was the slow demise of the store.  The owners of the store used to stock name brand items and over the past few months they moved to generic brands.  The deli counter slowly dropped it's choices of sides, salads, etc.  The shelves got emptier and emptier and finally, they had a going out of business sign posted and closed their doors last week.

It now gives the small town I work in one less place to get lunch, we now have 3 instead of 4, and for the locals who would need that gallon of milk, jar of $7.99 mayo, it means a 14 mile round trip to the nearest grocery store.  Try as I might to support a local market, it was hard for me to even buy the breakroom snacks at the local market.  We pretty much only keep coffee and tea supplies and some snacks for the office, but at the end the market was not even stocking drinkable tea bags.  It was cheaper for me to stop by the grocery store and get a bag of breakroom supplies and snacks for the same price as a can of one step above generic coffee. A sign of the times I guess...