By Jeff Kenney Citizen editor
The economy has hit some Culverites harder than others, but almost across the board, people are examining spending more carefully than before.
Some of those people have discovered the Market Basket and Company, the small grocery store north of Culver in the former Eagle’s lodge just south of S.R. 8 at 13775 S.R. 17.

Others may not have realized what’s inside the store, but longtime Culver area residents Kathy and Robbin Meek — and daughter Miranda — feel the place has a lot to offer potential shoppers, not only as a family-run, community business, but especially in the area of saving money.
Kathy, known to many in the Culver area for her work in sewing and tailoring as well as leading craft classes at the Culver library and elsewhere, says the couple’s original motive for purchasing the old Eagle’s building didn’t include the grocery store. Instead, the hope was to equip Miranda, who holds a degree in culinary arts (having interned both at the Katherine Kasper home near Ancilla College and Corndance Café in Culver, and baked bread for Earthworks for several years) with a certified kitchen from which to operate.
Knowing they’d need more revenue than such a venture could likely supply, the Meeks hit upon the idea of a surplus grocery, inspired largely by Kathy’s brother, Jim Lockwood, who frequented a similar store in a neighboring community.
Companies across the country act as salvage outlets, says Kathy, for stores going out of business, cleaning out their inventory, or for handling shipping truck accidents in which few food items are damaged, and “any time usable groceries would otherwise go to a landfill. (They’re sent to) what’s called reclamation centers.”
Those centers, in turn, supply stores like the Market Basket with high quality, usually name brand foods for a fraction of their cost at regular groceries.
After spending plenty of time researching the venture, Kathy and Robbin Meek purchased the building — which had originally been the Don Marie restaurant in the 1950s — in 2006, the year after it ceased functioning as an Eagles lodge. They began its renovation in 2007, cleaning and painting and opening the store June 1 of that year, after having the property rezoned as a business.
The store itself resides where the Eagles’ dance floor once sat, and a temporary wall separates an area suitable for craft and cooking classes, which the Market Basket has offered in times past and plans to offer again most likely this fall (classes for residents of the group home in Culver have been ongoing there).
Besides well-known brand named items (all non perishable at this point), the store often carries brands known in other areas such as Florida, as well gourmet and specialty items such as organic foods.
“We tell people the prices are 10 to 90 percent less than going to a regular grocery,” says Kathy, pointing out an example in the form of a case of 80 cans of flavored seltzer water for 10 cents a can or $5 for the entire case. If today’s economy causes some to hearken back to the 1930s Depression, browsing the shelves at the Market Basket reveals prices on many items there seem to have derived from that era as well.
In addition, the store offers natural herbs and spices, another specialty item, with its own brand label. These aren’t obtained from reclamation centers, and are available to customers in small packets or in bulk.
Robbin Meek came on board full-time about a year ago in December, explains Kathy, taking a leap of faith by leaving his own job to attend to the store, where he handles all the maintenance duties, grocery order pickups, and stocking. “We couldn’t do without his maintenance,” she adds.
And folks looking to stretch their dollars have discovered the Market Basket, which provides a service for families and individuals benefiting from its pricing.
“One guy came in yesterday and I asked him how his day was going,” Kathy says. “He said, ‘It’s better now (since finding the store)…we have 10 people we’re feeding.’”
The selection, she points out, rotates as new shipments come in and items on-shelf are sold. So items unavailable one day may be on hand another.
For her part, Miranda Meek says her interest in baking and cooking came from watching her mother and aunts in the kitchen as a child. Culinary arts nudged out nursing as a course of university study, and she enjoys selling her (mostly — but not all — baked) creations out of the Market Basket each Friday, ranging from jams to pies, cinnamon rolls to biscotti. She also sells at the Plymouth Farmer’s Market each Saturday, all in addition to working a few days a week at the store and spending evenings this summer practicing for her role in the Maxinkuckee Players’ “The Music Man,” the latest of several years’ worth of plays in which she’s performed with the group.
The Market Basket, which recently began taking debit cards as well as Mastercard and Visa, is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Thursdays from noon to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Market Basket may be reached at 574-842-2145.