Gassaway Kroger Slated For Closure In August

The Kroger grocery store in Gassaway is one of 60 nationwide slated for closure this year.  

The Braxton County town, in the center of the state, has a population of just over 700 people. About 50 of them are employed at the Kroger there. 

Doug Hamrick started working there for gas money in 1981 when he was still in high school. He called the pending closure heartbreaking.

“I raised my family. All the other members that work there. They’ve raised their families there. It’s been a really good job for all of us,” Hamrick said.

A spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union said it’s a loss of good union jobs that are hard to replace. 

“That’s one less employer in town that can provide those kinds of jobs with a union contract and benefits and all of those things, you know, let alone how devastated the customers and community will be by losing access to a proper grocery store,” said Jonathan Williams.

A Kroger spokesman called the closure a difficult decision that was part of an effort to ensure the long-term health of the company. The closure follows a 2022 effort to merge Kroger and Albertsons to create a grocery giant more able to compete with super stores like Walmart and Costco. A court decision blocked the merger and Albertsons later terminated the agreement.

A map shows a Wal-Mart in the nearby town of Sutton that opened around 2015.

“They took $100,000 off of our sales, and we were never able to regain that back,” Hamrick said.

Although he understands the company’s decision, he said longtime customers he’s talked with, who’ve become friends over the years, are devastated because they prefer the community store where they’re on a first-name basis with most of the staff.