Adrian Northrup

When the news broke last Tuesday, I reacted like most of my neighbors living across the footbridge – shocked, bummed and wondering how I’m going to get the energy to actually drive somewhere when I need to pick up a half-gallon of 2 percent.

Kerm’s on Water Street is just the latest example of a small, family-owned grocery store going by the wayside, one of many disturbing trends that has emerged in what I call the “Supercenter” era.

As many of us bemoan the convenience that has been erased, it appears as if Kerm’s was the victim of some its own practices, in addition to some conditions beyond its control and common problems among all small businesses.

Kerm’s had a niche for convenient, one-stop shopping on the way back from class or when gearing up for the weekend.

With the combination of location and selection, it only made sense. The store wasn’t conducive to major grocery shopping, so many of its customers only shopped for the necessities.

Some of those potential customers were unhappy with the prices and were already taking their business elsewhere, only dwindling down the Kerm’s customer base further.

I heard more than a few students speculate that prices were made higher on purpose to take advantage of us. After all, we can see it in certain other areas on campus -like, oh, I don’t know, anything sold in Davies Center and other businesses nearby the university.

Many students don’t have cars, so they go with what’s closest. For anyone living in the Water Street district, those choices are businesses like Kerm’s and Stave and Hoop.

Businesses on Water Street have to know that students go there oftentimes out of necessity, not necessarily out of laziness (although there is certainly a lot of that going on). To a degree, it only makes sense for them to raise their prices a tad. Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of their market?

But the closing of Kerm’s should send a message to businesses on and off campus: You know, if you lowered your prices, you might actually make more money because we would be more apt to shop there.

But there are outside factors out of the control of Kerm’s and other locally owned businesses. Notably, the rise of the all-purpose “mega stores,” such as Super Target and Wal-Mart Supercenter, as well as the bigger grocery store chains, has become a major issue for rural towns in Wisconsin and all over the United States.

I saw firsthand the effect a Supercenter can have on local grocery stores in my hometown of Prairie du Chien, the 6,000-resident seat of Crawford County in southwest Wisconsin.

Wal-Mart decided it needed to expand and build on the outskirts of town. In about a year’s time, one store had closed down completely and another – the one my dad and I worked at – was bought out by Piggly Wiggly.

The big companies often brag about all the jobs they create for a community, but what they don’t talk about is all the jobs that are lost after small businesses are forced to close.

Kerm’s employees are out of a job, at least in part, because their bosses couldn’t outsource work to India or China and keep up with the larger chains.

It should have never come to this for Kerm’s, but it’s a shame it did because the city has lost a longtime staple, and Kerm’s has joined a long list of small grocery stores that have succumbed under the weight of competitors it was never really able to compete with.