By battlefordsNOW

Super A owners say Battlefords businesses becoming harder to run

Jun 19, 2018 | 3:00 PM

It’s getting tougher and tougher to operate a small business in a small town.

The town of Battleford has seen its fair share of disappearing businesses throughout the town. Super A Foods became the latest business to close its doors Thursday.  

Aaron and Charity Janzen, the owners of the grocery store, said there were underlying factors when it comes to why they had to close their business.

“Some of the economic conditions required to operate a vital business in Battleford ceased to exist,” Aaron said. “The decision to remove the post office was also a large factor. Another factor was the provincial government’s decision to remove the liquor store from the downtown business community, taking a lot of the traffic from the downtown core.”

The owners said they tried to make the business work, but the issue was the lack of traffic coming into the downtown core.

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“It wasn’t sustainable for us. This would have been our fifth year in business, and the first two years were very good,” Charity explained. “We faced multiple hurdles that eventually made the business unviable. For a small, independent business owner such as ourselves, I don’t see how it would be viable at that location.”

The final issue that the owners faced was the crime rate.

“Another huge contributing factor to our demise was rapid theft,” Charity said. “That could also be a factor of the current economy.”

They said they lost significant quantities of goods to crime, something that is hard to come back from as they were a private grocer rather than a chain.

Super A foods closing means only one grocery store exists in the town, the 29th Street Market. Losing Super A Foods also means that many residents will have to travel to North Battleford to get their groceries, something the Janzens said many seniors may struggle with.

brady.lang@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @BradyLangCJNB