Will Lambe is the Director of the Community-Campus Partnership and Associate Director for the Community & Economic Development Program.
The Center for Rural Affairs has a newsletter series on “Sustaining Small Town Grocery Stores” (see here, here and here). The articles are short and sweet. There are some interesting examples of innovation in rural grocery store management, such as the store in Petersburg, Nebraska that entered into cooperative buying agreements with other bulk purchasers in town in order to avoid minimum buying penalties from food distributors. The final article highlights some of the federal programs that can be used to support, expand, and update rural grocery stores to help them compete in today’s marketplace. Additional resources are available through Kansas State’s “Rural Grocery Store Sustainability Initiative.”
Will Lambe authored the NC Rural Center report, Small Towns, Big Ideas, and he served as Director of the Community and Economic Development Program at the School of Government from 2009 to 2014.