This is a design mockup. The business shown here is invented, and the phone number, the prices and the opening hours on it are placeholders. The photographs are real, taken inside a working small town grocery.

Third Row Grocery

Nine aisles. Here is what is in all of them.

We are the only grocery in town and the next one is twenty three miles each way. That means people plan a trip here around whether we have the one thing, and there has never been anywhere to check.

So this is the store written down, in the order you walk it, with the things we do not carry printed next to the things we do.

Bags of cubed ice stacked several rows deep inside the ice chest. — Bagged ice, stacked several rows deep in the chest. On a hot Saturday it empties twice.

1Bread

Sliced white and wheat, buns, hot dog rolls, tortillas, English muffins, jam, jelly, peanut butter, local honey, syrup, and a bakery drop of loaves and cinnamon rolls that comes in Tuesday and Friday mornings.

The bakery bread is gone by noon on both days. It has been that way for eleven years and we have stopped pretending we can hold one back.

2Canned

Green beans, corn, peas, carrots, mixed veg, tomatoes whole and diced and sauced, peaches, pears, pineapple, soup, chili, ravioli, pork and beans, tuna, chicken.

One brand of nearly everything. If you want three brands of green beans to compare, that is the store in town, and it is a forty six mile round trip for green beans.

3Baking and dry

Flour, sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, cake and brownie mix, pasta, rice, noodles, cooking oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, the ordinary spices, foil, cling film, sandwich bags.

Twenty five pound flour bags in the back through November and December. Ask and we will carry one to the car.

4Breakfast

Cereal, oatmeal, grits, pancake mix, coffee ground and instant, tea, creamer, powdered drink mix, juice in cartons.

No whole bean coffee and no grinder. Everybody who wants that already knows where to get it, and it sat on this shelf for two years.

5Household

Paper towels, toilet roll, tissues, laundry powder and liquid, fabric softener, dish soap, bleach, all purpose cleaner, sponges, bin bags, mop heads, clothes pegs.

This is the aisle people are surprised we have. It is also the aisle that keeps the lights on in February.

6Snacks

Chips, pretzels, crackers, cookies, candy, gum, nuts, pop by the twelve pack and by the case, bottled water, sports drinks.

Case of pop is cheaper than four twelve packs and nobody ever notices, so we are telling you here.

Two bags of yogurt coated fruit snacks standing in their cardboard shipper, with a yellow price sticker written on by hand. — Prices still go on with a gun and a yellow sticker, one shipper at a time.

7Everything else

Dog and cat food, motor oil, charcoal, lighter fluid, work gloves, batteries, light bulbs, tape, string, WD 40, fuses, shotgun shells in season, and about four feet of nuts and bolts.

This aisle is why the hardware store closing did not ruin everybody's Saturday. It is not a hardware store. It is the twenty things people ran out of.

8Cold and frozen

Milk, cream, butter, eggs, cheese, yoghurt, lunch meat, bacon, sausage, frozen vegetables, pizza, fries, ice cream, ice.

Milk comes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Late Friday afternoon is the thinnest the dairy case gets all week.

Trays of freshly ground beef, wrapped in film, side by side in a chilled case. — Trays in the cold case, wrapped that morning.

9Beer and wine

Domestic beer in cans and bottles, four local cans, a short wall of wine under fifteen dollars, and mixers.

Short aisle and we know it. No spirits, because the licence is a different one and it is not worth what it costs us.

Two ribeye steaks side by side on black foam trays in the service case.

The counter

A real meat counter at the back with a man behind it who will cut what you ask for.

Ground fresh daily, steaks cut to your thickness, and a freezer bundle every month. What is in the case this week.

Pork loin chops laid out on a white tray, cut thick. — Loin chops, cut on the day and laid out on the tray.

If we do not have it

We will order it. A case of anything the truck already carries turns up on the next Thursday delivery, at case price, and you do not have to take the whole case if you only wanted two. That is the arrangement half the town runs on and it is written out on the special orders page.

Ring and ask

Somebody is at the register from half past eight. If you are about to drive over for one thing, ring first and one of us will walk down the aisle and look at the shelf while you wait on the line.

816 555 0165