Board & Committees

Bushel & Peck’s Local Market

The City of Beloit purchased 328 State Street, formerly known as the Woolworth Building, in 2003 with plans to demolish the building and build a parking lot due to increasing parking needs of a large International company located downtown. The funds were set aside in the CIP for this project and acquisition was complete in December of 2003. The parking demand subsided when the company laid off 70 workers shortly thereafter which allowed the community an opportunity to seek an alternate solution to build value for the entire district. With this opportunity to rethink the building’s imminent demolition, the Downtown Beloit Association began advocating use of the budget set aside in City funds to save this building, restore it to it’s original architectural integrity, define it’s highest reuse as an economic catalyst, and place it back on the tax rolls. The City worked with the Downtown Beloit Association to accomplish this goal and the restoration of the facade was completed in 2007.

Concurrently, the Beloit’s Downtown Farmers Market, managed by the DBA, demonstrated clear success as it doubled in size, both in number of vendors and square footage, showcasing over 70 vendors in 2006. This success illustrated the demand for local foods and offered an opportunity to pursue a venture to offer local foods in a year-round market. Jackie Gennett and Rich Horbaczewski of Grass is Greener Gardens, sold lamb, chicken, and eggs from their farm at the Beloit Farmers Market beginning in 2005 and through their experience at the market became increasingly interested in Downtown Beloit. They responded to the City’s Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Woolworth site with a plan for developing a full-service specialty grocery with a strong focus on local farmers and producers, and were selected as the developer of choice.

The grocery opened its doors to the public in July of 2008 under the name Bushel & Peck’s Local Market generating a great deal of media interest regionally and nationally. Gennett and Horbaczewski were interviewed on Milwaukee Public Radio’s Lake Effect for a segment called Local Green, and also on WISC-TV in Madison. Articles were published by the Capitol Region Business Journal and the Weather Channel’s online magazine.

Bushel & Peck’s Local Market features local and regionally-produced foods and products including wine and beer representing the array of fresh food and value-added products available in the region. Bushel & Peck’s currently offers cafe seating with house made meals and prepared foods for lunch or take-out for day or evening meals and may support a butcher in the future. Gennett and Horbaczewski also use the grocery as a distribution point to serve restaurants from Chicago to Madison (currently L’Etoile of Madison serves their lamb and chicken) and home subscribers. The market created 12 new jobs in the downtown.

This project was intended to be a catalyst for economic growth in the downtown. Bushel & Peck’s Local Market supports the retail mix downtown by adding another anchor retailer to expand and diversify the products offered and, therefore, will expand the customer base for our district. The grocery has reinforced and increased investor confidence in the district and has drawn interest for new complimentary businesses to open downtown.

We know that people travel from Rockford and beyond to our Farmers Market and that the local food movement is a powerful national economic trend. This grocery has the ability to draw new customers from throughout the region and we believe this will also translate into the strong potential to increase sales for our restaurants and retailers. Bushel & Peck’s supports local business beyond downtown including our area farmers. It extends access to many of the Farmers Market products throughout the year and provides an amenity for the community as the gathering place where you socialize and meet the people who grow your food. National grocery chains, even the whole foods markets cannot offer the local experience and local products. This can only be achieved with local producers and community based support. This concept fills a niche that will not cannibalize current business but will expand its opportunity. The larger grocery stores will continue to serve their core market and should not be adversely affected either, as the Farmers Market experience has proven.

Our local foods grocery developers, Jackie Gennett and Rich Horbaczewski of Grass is Greener Gardens, have great relationships and credibility with our Farmers Market vendors and a large passionate customer base. They currently run a farm, but have also been very successful working for 20 years in the corporate world in the areas of sales and market operations, product management, technical systems development and information technology with companies like Time Warner in Chicago. We have great confidence in their ability to develop an exciting, well-planned local grocery concept that the community will enjoy for many years to come.