Food Finders closes the deal on Fresh Market space
Grocery store facility will carry the Scheumann family name for their help. Plus, LSC teachers keep pressing school board over school day changes without new contract. And ‘Jeopardy’ champ wins again
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FOOD FINDERS CLOSES THE DEAL ON FRESH MARKET SPACE
Food Finders Food Bank celebrated a landmark Monday, announcing the final purchase of the building that has housed the Fresh Market on Greenbush Street since late 2020 and naming the former grocery store space for the Scheumann family after backing that help seal the deal.
“It was an unusually long and sometimes frustrating process,” Kier Crites Muller, Food Finders president and CEO, said during a ceremony Monday. “So, we just wanted to be sure that we didn't let this moment pass without taking a moment to celebrate all the generous people that made this possible.”
Food Finders moved its main pantry operations into the Market Square Shopping Center location shortly after a Save-A-Lot grocery store closed in 2020. The move came as Food Finders was finding its way through the distribution challenges imposed by COVID demand and social distancing requirements at its headquarters several blocks away. The former Save-A-Lot provided a 17,000-square-foot setup of shelving, coolers, freezers and check-out stations that gave Food Finders more of grocery store experience for people coming to supplement their food budgets. Meant as a temporary response to food distribution during the pandemic, the initial lease was covered by a COVID-era Feeding America grant.
“It worked so well, we weren’t going to be able to go back and serve people the way we had like we could here,” Crites Muller said. “It would have been like putting biscuits back in the can once you open it.”
Two years ago, Food Finders set out to buy the facility as the centerpiece of its operations.
Tippecanoe County, Lafayette and West Lafayette contributed or leveraged local and federal funds of more than $1.1 million toward the purchase and renovation of Fresh Market, which wound up being a $2.2 million sale.
“When (former Food Finders CEO) Katy (Bunder) shared her vision for what this was, it was an easy yes,” Tippecanoe County Commissioner Tom Murtaugh said about the county putting $500,000 in COVID-era American Rescue Plan Act money toward the project.
Another $1 million came from the Scheumann family, which earlier had donated land near Food Finders’ main offices that cleared space for more efficient food distribution and had offered other grants for trucks and other needs.
Crites Muller called the gift an unprecedented one for Food Finders. On Monday, Food Finders named the facility the Scheumann Center for Hunger Relief.
“Three words come to mind – amazed and excited, and now thrilled,” June Scheumann said. “We were very excited to say, yes, we would like to be a part of this.”
Crites Muller said Fresh Market’s visits have trended up each year since opening, with more than 80,000 so far in 2024.
She pointed to numbers tracked by Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap surveys that indicate that 14.5% of Tippecanoe County’s population qualifies as food insecure. That comes to 27,130 residents. Crites Muller said that 57% of those people live below the poverty line, meaning they may qualify for some federal assistance programs. The other 43% who are food insecure live above that threshold, earning too much to qualify.
“We see people every day who come in with their uniforms on from work or in scrubs and are stopping in after work,” Crites Muller said. “This population are what we refer to as the working poor and folks we don't want to see slip and fall further into poverty. Food Finders and other local social service agencies are their only safety net.”
Crites Muller said the grocery store portion of the facility won’t expand for now. She said that now that Food Finders owns the building, the nonprofit is looking to expand education space, arrange offices of coordinators to offer more privacy for those who come to shop and additional storage.
“We’re still amazed that this opportunity came along,” Crites Muller said. “And we’re amazed by how everyone came together to make it work.”
LAFAYETTE TEACHERS CONTINUE TO PRESS SCHOOL BOARD ON CHANGES TO SCHOOL DAY WITHOUT NEW CONTRACT
Lafayette teachers marched to Hiatt Administration Center Monday, filling the room for a LSC school board meeting for a second time in two weeks, continuing to air their frustrations over changes to the length of the school day coming in the fall without a change in their contracts or compensation.
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