“I am still the worst employee that we’ve ever had at the store,” said Jimmy Wright, a lifelong independent grocer from Opelika, Alabama.

Wright was only 12 years old when he started working at the grocery store managed by his father. He’d goof off, get sent home across the street, and then get called back when it got busy again. “I’d get fired three, four times a day,” Wright said.

These days, Wright remembers his childhood experiences whenever an employee thinks a new co-worker “just isn’t going to work out.“

“It’ll be fine,” Wright says. “Trust me. He has a long way to go to get where I was at, and I own the place today, so there’s hope for everybody.” 

Wright is a leader among independent grocers, known nationally for his innovation and passion for serving customers who face food insecurity. In 2024, he earned both the Rural Grocery Initiative’s Grocery Champion of the Year and the Independent Grocers Alliance (IGA)’s CEO Award. The accolades followed a year of 18% growth in the business.

“Last year was the best year we ever had in terms of sales and profits,” Wright said. That cherry-on-the-top growth came as a surprise amid a tight competitive environment and inflationary pressures. Upgrades financed through the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), awarded in 2021, laid the groundwork for the store’s success. That growth helped sustain dozens of local jobs at the store — a cornerstone employer in Opelika.

HFFI, a USDA Rural Development program administered by Reinvestment Fund received a $155-million infusion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in 2021 to aid in the country’s economic recovery from the pandemic. 

With a $200,000 HFFI grant and his own investment back in the business, Wright updated refrigeration for fruits and veggies, shrinking energy costs by 15%. Attractive glass-doored produce cases reduced spoilage to almost zero. Refrigeration repair costs also dropped.

“We used some of those savings to reinvest back into the price, to lower the price in the midst of this inflationary environment,” he said.

Wright also purchased equipment so that the 22,000-square-foot grocery store could offer prepared foods like ribs and rotisserie chicken. The market expanded refrigeration for bulk items such as frozen meat to serve cost-conscious customers.

Many of Wright’s customers have to be cost-conscious. The market is located across from a large public housing complex, and about 40% of the store’s total business is through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). “We have always served the lower-income community,” Wright said. “We just understand that customer and the dignity of serving somebody, even if they’re challenged in life.”

Serving SNAP customers has helped Wright’s Market weather economic swings and remain a steady presence in the neighborhood — proof that businesses rooted in equity can also be built to last.

Opelika’s 20th-century economic backbone was textile milling. Employees worked hard, long hours at cotton mills for low pay. “People who worked in the mills supported us and shopped in the store, but man, oh man, they were tough jobs in those mills,” Wright recalls of his first customers. “It was hot. They just come out, just covered in cotton and stuff, but I saw in them such a work ethic, no matter what that environment was.”

Seeing that hard work shaped Wright’s approach to the grocery business “There’s absolutely no business else out there that we see so many people,” he said. “I mean, food is history. It’s our heritage. So we have such a way to connect with people.”

In 2015, Wright started helping a small grocer in Atlanta place wholesale orders. He now spends about two days a week helping small grocery stores in Atlanta improve fresh food access. 

Wright consults with other independent grocers on technical aspects of SNAP and pilots new programs for SNAP. Wright’s Market introduced online ordering in 2016, and the grocer continues finding innovative ways to serve rural people who lack transportation or face mobility challenges.

HFFI funding has helped Wright better serve these customers and stay ahead of the competitive curve through reinvestment. “It’s been very helpful for us continuing to be sustainable for the long term,” he said. “We weren’t heading into problems, but this keeps us way ahead of problems.”

The grocery store now has fourth-generation employees, and Wright hopes he can pass along lessons he learned as a young person. “We’re in the business of really tough margins, but at the end of the day, I think I’d rather my legacy be that there was 150 kids that came through my life that I helped, versus did I make a quarter percent more on the bottom line,” Wright said. “I always have tried to live by the phrase that we can make a dollar and make a difference at the same time.”

The American Rescue Plan Act was a stimulus package passed by the 117th U.S. Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was signed into law in March of 2021 by President Biden to aid in the country’s economic recovery.