CECD conducts surveys to help rural businesses

More than 6,000 surveys left K-State in early March for a visit to rural grocery stores and customers in Kansas.

"There are actually two types of surveys that we sent, one for store owners, and one for grocery store customers," said Chandra Ruthstrom, administrative assistant for the Center for Engagement and Community Development at K-State.

The grocery store owner survey is intended to gather information state-wide to better understand industry challenges and strategies for success of rural Kansas grocery stores. The survey was sent to stores serving communities with a population of 2,000 or less. The information from these surveys will be shared with interested store owners at a rural grocer summit at the Kansas Sampler Foundation in Inman, Kan., on June 1, 2008.

The grocery store customer surveys are taking place in the service area of five cooperating grocery stores. These surveys went to every box holder within an area surrounding each of the cooperating stores; and the surveys will collect information that will help the stores better understand the product and service needs of the customers in their area.

The surveys were created by staff in Agricultural Economics at K-State, with the support and feedback from staff from the Kansas Sampler Foundation, the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development, the participating rural grocery store owners and CECD staff.

"While the immediate feedback of this project will help the participating stores, I am also pleased that these same survey tools will be available for use by K-State Research and Extension staff to assist other stores too," CECD Director David Procter said.

The surveys are currently available online at www.ruralgrocery.org. This Web site was created by K-State to be both an informational networking site as well as a resource location for rural store owners. This initiative is possible due to generous support from the USDA Rural Development Office.

Rural Grocery Store Sustainability Initiative

Confronting issues of business development, public health and community sustainability, CECD is partnering with the Kansas Sampler Foundation, the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development, grocery store owners from across the state and faculty and staff from the departments of agricultural economics, human nutrition and rural sociology at K-State to identify and develop models to sustain retail sources of food for rural Kansas citizens.

The Center for Engagement and Community Development and its partners have identified nearly 200 grocery stores in rural towns across Kansas with populations under 2,000 and are beginning a much-needed conversation with these rural Kansas grocers.

Through this initiative, CECD seeks to create new models for rural business development and sustainability and plans to address specific questions such as,

• How can we increase local customer loyalty?
• How can rural business best compete with large chain stores?
• What are the best strategies for dealing with minimum buying requirements?
• What models of rural business ownership are most effective?
• Are there alternative models of distribution for getting products to rural business owners?

The specific goals of this initiative include:

• To create a rural grocery website for sharing information with one another,
• To create and deliver a marketing survey of customers needs and wishes,
• To create a list of rural grocer best practices, and
• To begin to develop a "buy local" campaign.

If you would like to be included in this conversation or would like to talk about rural business development retention, please contact CECD at 785-532-6868 or cecd@k-state.edu.

Gove Community Improvement Association (GCIA) — A Kansas Profile

This is Kansas Profile. I'm Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.

What happened at your local grocery store when the ice storm hit? Many stores struggled to provide needed supplies when an ice storm hit Kansas in December 2007. Today we'll learn about a rural Kansas store which found a way to serve its community members despite the storm - in part because the store is owned by the community itself. It's today's Kansas Profile.

Meet Von Tuttle, Cheri Remington, Marvin Beesley, Kassie Remington, Don Zerr, and Megan Tuttle, members of the Board of Directors of the Gove Community Improvement Association.

Gove is a rural place. It has the distinction of being the smallest county seat in the state with a population of 103 people. Now, that's rural.

It's a challenge to sustain services in a town that size. The local grocery store in Gove closed in the early 1980s. In 1986, a group of concerned citizens came together to reopen and operate a store. They formed the Gove Community Improvement Association or GCIA and founded the GCIA Grocery.

By the early 1990s, the local café had closed as well. In 1995, the GCIA built a new building with volunteer labor, local donations, and a ten year no interest loan from the local rural electric cooperative which has been repaid. This building houses the GCIA Grocery as well as a community-owned eating place called the County Seat Café.

For $25, a person can join GCIA which entitles them to charge their groceries at the store. I don't mean with a credit card, I mean that the store will keep a charge account for them which they pay at the end of the month.

The building is clean and well-maintained. But what is really unusual is that it is community-owned and directed by volunteers. There is a hired manager, but a board of volunteers gives direction and also provides legwork to operate it.

In 2006, GCIA purchased a local grocery distribution business. The wholesaler delivers groceries to GCIA which are then redistributed to other local stores. This helps all the stores meet the minimum purchase requirement from the supplier, as well as sharing needed produce or meat products. Board members and other volunteers step in to help sort the shipments each week.

The GCIA Board has seen first-hand the importance of having a store nearby for the elderly or young families. Cheri Remington saw this benefit while caring for her husband's grandmother. Or when there's a sick baby in town, someone is willing to open the store to get the medicine they need.

A dramatic example happened in the ice storm of December 2007. The power in Gove was out for five days, but the GCIA Grocery opened to serve the community. The store had no power and no lights, but they found a way to make it work.

Marvin Beesley says, "We had flashlights and people went through the aisles. We didn't have a cash register but we wrote down who owed what, and when it was all over, they came in and paid their bills. It's another convenience of having a local store."

They used a portable generator to keep the refrigerator and freezer going at the café, but there was too much in the store to save it all. So they took a bunch of food to the gas grill in the café, cooked it up and fed a bunch of people, including the linemen who were working on the down electrical lines. The café itself was unlocked, because the generator cord went through the café door so it had to remain open. People took food to shut-ins and neighbors helped neighbors.

Marvin Beesley says, "It wasn't a good time, but it was a lot of community togetherness."

So what happened at your local grocery store when the ice storm hit? In the case of Gove, the people of the community and the community store came together and helped each other through tough times. We commend all those who are part of the Gove Community Improvement Association for making a difference by sustaining that local service. That spirit of cooperation helps rural communities to cope with whatever might be in store.

For the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development, this is Ron Wilson with Kansas Profile.