Skip to main content

Hometown Sad Part 2: Some History of Rittman IGA

Part one of this series can be viewed by clicking here.
I moved to Rittman in the summer of 1983 with my wife, two year old daughter, and one child on the way. There were two grocery stores in town, Wilging's Mainway Market, and Ryan's Rittman Foodliner(IGA). Times were good for the consumer in Rittman because with two grocery stores we had competition, and competition brought lower prices. That my friends, is part of what free enterprize is about.

The building that housed the IGA was also at one time a Kroger store, but alas they built a bigger store in nearby Wadsworth, so they vacated this building and the IGA came to town to serve the Rittman community. Ryans changed suppliers for a spell and for more than a year the store was a Sparkle Market, but reverted back to IGA.

Mainway Market, who also had locations in Seville and Doylestown, closed their Rittman store in 1992, leaving the IGA as the only grocery store in Rittman. Ryans sold out to Bill Alfords and Bill LeCount, and became known as Rittman IGA.

There has always been other places to shop in nearby towns. Giant Eagle took over the Kroger location in Wadsworth(Kroger left the area due to a labor dispute). Family owned Buehler's Markets has locations in Wadsworth, Orrville, and Wooster. IGA seemed to coexist well with these stores.

Enter Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart opened their Wooster store in 1992. At the time they were only competition for places like K-Mart, Sears, Woolworths etc. In 1998 the store expanded to a supercenter, now offering groceries at a tremendous discount, due to their buying power. In 2004 WalMart opened s supercenter in Wadsworth.

How can an independent survive against the world's largest employer?

Part 3; Where will we go now?

Part 4; Dreamers needed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post 800: Time to chat

Hi Guys, It's hard to believe that this is post number 800 for this blog. I started this blog out of my desire to communicate. Since radio and television is becoming more and more automated and less and less personal, I'm glad I made the decision to go in this direction as it has given me many blessings. When I first decided to write my musings, a friend from the radio and television boards who goes by the name of newsnomore, told me not to be discouraged if I didn't get any readers. The fact that I did in the early going made me surprised and grateful that anyone was enjoying what I wrote. I've had people tell me that maybe it wasn't meant for me to ever be in radio, that maybe my calling was blogging. Nowadays I think blogging makes for better two way conversation than terrestrial radio, especially the way I do it, non confrontational. The closest I come from any confrontation is the innocent digs that Pat and I shoot at each other. On an average day I get betwee...
12 comments
Read more

Bananas and Sleep Apnea

First thing I want to do is welcome all the good folks from Australia who are checking me out as a result of Google searches. I recently wrote a post on sleep apnea , discussing my history with it and my new CPAP machine. Because of this and the name of my blog, this is the top site google lists when somebody types "bananas sleep apnea" into the search line on Google. All of the sites I have seen, that were not the usual sites that come here, ended in "dot au" which I know as Australia. Normally the only hit from down under is by my good friend David McMahon. The reason for the search is that a research team in Australia has found. as a result of a study, that drinking a banana smoothie may assist in easing conditions that cause sleep apnea. Phospholipids, or fatty acids, in bananas stay active in the mouth for six hours and may keep the throat open, therefore reducing the risk of choking. Further studies will expand to those, like myself, who need a breathing machi...
19 comments
Read more

Why?

What I'm posting now is with the blessing of Chelle. Chelle is the cousin of Suzanne's husband, Richard. I had gotten the impression from both of them that they were about as close as sisters. Suzanne had been a friend of mine since I had discovered one of her blogs in July, 2006. We would make reference to each other on our blogs and would have dialogue via email quite a bit. It was no surprise to me that she was friends to many other bloggers as well. I felt it was quite an honor to be held in as high esteem as I was. We even talked to each other on the phone on occasion. I felt as we had known each other for a long time. I also knew that Suzanne was having some personal problems, much of which had to do with a very troubled marriage. I would let her bounce things off me, and I would send her some encouragement. While she was going through some of her marital problems, she made herself available to give me a lift when I needed it. My son was having some problems of his own a...
17 comments
Read more