The Elwood Home Hometown Cooperative Market is closing its doors for the final time tonight, leaving residents stranded without a grocery store for miles.
“This is going to be really missed,” Enola Obrien, an Elwood resident, said. “Honestly, it’s really inconvenient, especially for the people that like us. Shorter commute and don’t always have the time to rush into Lexington.
“If we’re not shopping at the store that’s in Lexington, we’ll probably go to Dollar General,” Arianna Pike, another Elwood resident, said. “It’s quite inconvenient because some because the market did have a lot better prices than Dollar General.”
Residents added that the grocery store was a staple to the community
“The market closing means that there is not really a common place to meet unless you want to meet at the park,” Pike said.
“It was a center point for the community of Elwood,” Obrien added.
This is the second time since 2012 that the grocery store has closed.
Shortly thereafter, with the help of the Nebraska Lincoln Cooperative Development Center, a ten-member committee worked diligently to reopen the store.
The Elwood Cooperative Hometown Market has served the community ever since.
“This store has been really prominent for that school, like with advertising and, you know, making sure like sometimes we get meat for the school, and they’ll do grill outs for hamburgers and stuff, so it has benefited in a lot of ways,” Obrien said. “We’ve done a lot of fundraisers for like teammates and the Jack Foundation or Team Jack, and the market has helped elevate some of those.”
This is part of a much larger issue. From 2016 to 2021, the number of independent rural grocery stores in the Cornhusker State shrink by 30%. And in 2023, 12.9% of Nebraskan families faced some degree of food insecure city.
The grocery store will shut down its operation for the final time tonight.
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