Ruler, the only grocery in downtown Madison, is closing at the end of the month, its parent company Kroger announced Friday, saying the store is “underperforming.”
The 14 employees, who were informed of the closing about an hour before it was announced, will be offered jobs at stores Kroger owns in the area, said Ken McClure, Kroger’s regional director of corporate affairs for the Midwest.
Madison Mayor Damon Welch said a downtown grocery “is vital to thousands of downtown residents, employers, and thousands of visitors each year.”
Ruler will close at 6 p.m. March 31, a little over seven years since it controversially replaced another Kroger-family store, JayC, at 120 E. Second St. That change meant it became a “discount and value” store with stock in cardboard boxes, customers bagging and carrying out their own groceries, and refundable 25-cent rental grocery carts.
But the biggest change and the least welcome for many when the store became Ruler was that Mary DeCar’s fried chicken no longer was to be sold, and the deli also was to be closed. Pickets marched outside the store at East Second and Mulberry streets, and a protest Facebook page was started and grew to 600 members. Kroger corporate relented and said fried chicken would remain. But it was not long before the fryer was shut down for good.
Downtown resident Jan Vetrhus, who usually walks to downtown destinations, started the Facebook page seven years ago and was a leader of the keep-the-chicken pickets. A downtown grocery “is critical for a vibrant downtown if we are going to be a walkable community,” she said Friday.
On Monday, USA Today published a story about the most charming Main Streets in each state, and in Indiana, Madison was the choice. “We cannot be the community USA Today said we are” because a vibrant downtown is “predicated on goods and services downtown,” Vetrhus said.
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