Charlie's Market closing its doors

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

An east side fix­ture will be clos­ing its doors within the month. Charlie’s Mar­ket gro­cery store is liq­ui­dat­ing and its own­ers, the Kline fam­ily, expect to fin­ish the process in about three weeks.

The gro­cery recently switched sup­pli­ers, hop­ing that promises of lower prices would please cus­tomers. For about a month at the end of this sum­mer, Charlie’s rearranged the gro­cery sec­tion, cut­ting off access for the dura­tion and los­ing some cus­tomers because of the inac­ces­si­bil­ity, said Carol Kline, co-owner with hus­band Roy Kline of the grocery.

“We went with another com­pany because they said they were going to do that for us,” Carol said of the switch. “And it didn’t turn out that way.” Most prices didn’t get any cheaper and the store did not regain the busi­ness it had lost dur­ing the switchover, she said. Rather than shut down that part again for a month to go back to the orig­i­nal sup­plier, the Klines decided to close permanently.

“We can’t afford to make another change,” Carol said.

The switchover capped a period of eco­nomic trou­ble for the business.

“It’s been good up until the last three years,” said Roy. “And I think it’s because peo­ple are mov­ing out of town because the electric’s so high.” He said the elec­tric bill took its toll on the gro­cery itself, too. He tried to save money on the util­i­ties by shut­ting off one of the freez­ers and remov­ing sev­eral pop refrig­er­a­tors and vend­ing machines, but the changes made $50 dif­fer­ence in the bill, which aver­aged between $5–6,000.

Then the Klines informed gro­cery store bro­kers start­ing about a year ago that they would sell the store to some­one inter­ested in keep­ing the gro­cery open. Any inter­est that they received faded after they said what the price of elec­tric was, Carol said.

Charlie’s Mar­ket was opened by Roy’s father, Char­lie Kline, in 1974, when he rented a build­ing on Par­son Street for a gro­cery store. The gro­cery occu­pied var­i­ous Galion loca­tions until land­ing at the cor­ner of Hard­ing Way and Gel­san­liter Road between 1983 and 1984. Then Roy and Carol took over the busi­ness after Char­lie decided to retire.

“I’ve really liked it,” Carol said. “I enjoy work­ing with peo­ple. I can’t think of too many bad things.” Her daugh­ter, Wendy Fout, reminded her of the dif­fi­cul­ties and stress that come with own­ing one’s own busi­ness, like not hav­ing had a vaca­tion in years. But over­all, “it’s been a good busi­ness for us,” Carol said. “We’ll miss all the people.”

Carol has worked in the gro­cery busi­ness ever since grad­u­at­ing from high school. She started work­ing for Charlie’s Mar­ket after Great Scott went out of busi­ness in the 1980s and saw two of her daugh­ters join the busi­ness when they got old enough. The daugh­ters will have jobs else­where, as will most of the employ­ees, but a few are still look­ing for employment.