A grocery store opened in McArthur on Wednesday, giving residents their first opportunity to buy fresh produce in town in more than three years.
The store, Campbell’s Market, is a family-owned business with locations in Zanesville and Duncan Falls that allows residents to buy locally.
“Everybody seems to love this store,” Garry Saunders, a store manager at Campbell’s Market, said. “Now they don't have to drive out or even out of the county in order to get fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and fresh meat. It's a big change.”
Saunders said the store had been busy every day since it opened.
Barbara Walker, an assistant manager at the store, said residents previously had to drive up to half an hour to Jackson to buy fresh food.
“It's changed immensely,” Walker said. “They had to go to Wellston or Jackson to get produce.”
The county has been a food desert — or a geographic area where residents’ access to healthy, affordable food is limited or nonexistent — since McArthur’s last grocery store closed in 2013.
Campbell’s Market was given more than $1.5 million by the Finance Fund Capital Corporation through its Healthy Food for Ohio, or HFFO, program to build its location in McArthur, according to a news release.
“Campbell’s Market represents what HFFO is all about — providing funding to help fresh food grocers open or expand operations in disadvantaged and underserved rural and urban areas,” Finance Fund Capital Corporation President and CEO Diana Turoff said in the release. “It’s a great example of what’s possible when highly committed people mobilize to overcome obstacles and realize a shared vision for a healthier community.”
The store will also provide 15 full-time and 15 part-time jobs to local residents, which could create more development in the area, according to the release.
“Grocery stores are fundamental to improving the quality of life and attracting business and jobs to disadvantaged communities,” the release reads. “Grocers such as Campbell’s Market provide entry-level jobs with flexible hours for community residents and serve as economic anchors that attract neighboring development.”
Though residents in McArthur and the areas surrounding it will benefit from the grocery store, a food desert will still exist in some areas of the county, according to a previous Post report.
Some residents, like those who live in Wilkesville, a small town more than 20 miles away on country roads south of McArthur, will still have to drive almost half an hour for food, according to the previous Post report.
Ashley Riegel, who lives in Wilkesville, said in the previous report that residents who live outside of the village are faced with inflated prices at gas stations and dollar stores.
“I either pay $4 in gas to get $2 milk, or get it here for $4,” Riegel said in the previous Post report.
Riegel directs McArthur’s St. Francis Outreach Center, a food pantry and clothing center which delivers food and clothing to many residents of Vinton County since many residents don’t have access to cars.
“Most people don’t have reliable transportation at all,” Riegel said in a previous Post report.
Though the store can’t provide relief to the entire county, it will provide fresh groceries to the more than 10 percent of Vinton County’s population that lives in McArthur and could spur more economic development in the area.
"I’m hoping businesses will begin to come back," Vinton County Commissioner Tim Eberts said in the previous Post report. "If people go out of town, they get into that pattern. I hope they stay right here in McArthur to do their shopping."
