Teen brings a grocery store back to Truman, Minn.

In 2006, Main Street in Truman, Minn., was struggling, and its best hope did not even have a diploma. After the town of 1,259 in the southern part of the state lost its only grocery store, 17-year-old Nick Graham (in photo by Ken Klotzbach) brought a spark to Main Street by buying and reopening the store, writes Marti Attoun for American Profile magazine, a supplement to many rural newspapers.

A senior at Truman High School at the time, Graham recently had moved back to his hometown to live with his grandmother. Since the nearest supermarket was 14 miles away in Fairmont, Graham thought reopening the store was a no-brainer. “I thought it could be a community service and a profitable enterprise,” he told Attoun. “It was a buyer’s market and I pretty much got to name my price.”

Graham applied for a $22,000 loan from the Truman Development Corp. to buy the store and fixtures and after one meeting, the group's 25 members voted unanimously to give it to him. He then spent $10,000 — earned from shingling roofs and working on his uncle's turkey farm — to buy the inventory. When the Main Street Market reopened in November 2006, 400 residents came. Since then, Graham has paid off his loan, and he has bought a second store, Armstrong Foods in Armstrong, Iowa, 35 miles south of Truman.

“I enjoy what I do,” Graham says. “Rural America is an underserved market. The challenges are harder, but you’re overlooked by the competition, too.” (Read more)