By RON WILSON
Director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
Transitions. Those can be challenging, exciting, scary and difficult – all at the same time. They are also a part of life.
Ownership transitions can be especially challenging for businesses in small towns. Today we’ll meet the owners of a rural grocery store that has served its community for more than a century, and now has successfully made a transition to new ownership.
Fred and Vali Smith have been the longtime owners of Tipton Grocery. Tipton is in Mitchell County, southwest of Beloit.
Fred Smith’s grandparents farmed near Tipton. Fred lived here until he was five.
“My dad was a state trooper and we were transferred all over Kansas,” Smith said.
In the summers, Smith and his brothers would often come back to the farm.
Smith joined the Army and was stationed in Germany where he met and married Vali. They returned to the States where Fred worked in law enforcement in Chicago, and Vali was supervisor at a bank.
Fred and Vali made occasional trips back home with their kids to Tipton to see the family. During one of those times Mrs. Pfeiffer, the owner of the local grocery store, told them that they should stay and take over the store, but Fred and Vali both had good jobs in Chicago.
“One time we were back visiting from Chicago,” Smith said. “Our kids asked if they could go to so-and-so’s house and I said, ‘No, stay here where I can keep an eye on you.’ My uncle looked at me and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Here the whole town can keep an eye on them.’”
It made Smith appreciate the safety and security that his family could find in small town Kansas. Smith also met the local school principal who reached out to them.
“He was the most kind and compassionate principal I had ever met,” Fred said. Ultimately, Fred Smith and the family moved back to Tipton.
Back in 1906, John Schmidt had started a grocery store and butcher shop in Tipton. The store changed hands through the years. The Pfeiffer family became the third owners. In 1991, Mrs. Pfeiffer sold the store to Fred and Vali Smith. Along with the store came an original recipe for German sausage.
In 1996, the Smiths had an opportunity to buy a larger building down the street in Tipton, next door to a former locker plant where they were able to expand the store and the sausage production. “We make it right there in the store,” Smith said.
For a time, Smith also supplied stores in nearby rural communities such as Luray, population 166, and Hunter, population 51 people. Now, that’s rural.
When Fred and Vali were looking to retire from the Tipton Grocery, they advertised the potential sale of the store locally – but no one stepped forward. Smith thought about advertising regionally or even nationally but rejected that idea.
The Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University put Smith in touch with Kansas business consultant Les Streit.
“He offered great advice,” Smith said. “They also arranged for a guy called Joe the Grocer to come in, and he was fantastic. He also gave us an official appraisal.”
Eventually Smith published a timeline, projecting that the store would go to auction in six months if a buyer was not found. That word reached the grandson of a local farm family who came for a visit with his wife. “They loved it here,” Smith said.
The families reached agreement. In September 2023, Brandi and Drew Shirack became the new owners of Tipton Grocery – still making Tipton Sausage using the original recipe.
“We’re glad the store is open and being run by a very capable young couple,” Smith said.
For more information, look for Tipton Grocery on Facebook.
Transitions. They can be challenging and difficult. We commend Fred and Vali Smith and Drew and Brandi Shirack for making a difference by conducting this transition successfully.
And there’s more. I mentioned that the store was advertised locally. That was easy because Fred also publishes a newspaper for the community. We’ll learn about that next week.