Certified Warehouse Foods wraps up 37 years in Joliet

JOLIET – Syrenthia Eskridge choked back tears as she talked about Certified Warehouse Foods, the local supermarket that is closing its two Joliet stores.

“It’s going to be missed,” Eskridge said, standing by the checkout counter of the Jackson Street store. “This is like the neighborhood, convenient place that you came to do your shopping.”

The store meant more to her than Eskridge could put into words.

But she wasn't the only customer to have been moved to tears at the loss of Certified Warehouse Foods, which closed its Richards Street store Tuesday and closes the Jackson Street store Wednesday.

“We were getting people who were crying when they first found out. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ ” said Nora Toth, head cashier at the Jackson Street store.

But Toth, as she talked about her 30 years at the store, fought back tears herself at times.

“It’s almost like a small family,” she said, nodding toward cashier Connie Baker. “Connie’s been here 25 years. Vicky is the newest. She’s only been here five years. Even though it’s work, and it’s business, you become friends.”

Toth became more than friends with store manager Pete Toth, whom she married.

Some people came to the store almost daily, chatting in the aisles, Nora Toth said. Pete Toth told how women in the neighborhood would bring cakes for Certified employees at Christmastime – sometimes fresh out of the oven.

“Those were great cakes,” Pete Toth said.

East Side ‘food desert’

Certified Warehouse Foods is a store that never got a lot of respect in Joliet.

It’s the last mainstream supermarket on the East Side, that has several Hispanic grocers. But Certified stores had plain exteriors and nothing fancy on the inside.

Although the store has been around since 1981, city politicians and community leaders over the years have talked about the East Side needing a grocery store, as if Certified Warehouse Foods didn’t exist.

“You’ve got a store on the East Side,” Pete Toth said, reflecting on what he would think when hearing the complaint. “Support the store that you have.”

Usually what was meant was that there was no chain supermarket on the East Side. They all left or closed years ago. Despite city efforts, none have come back.

Pete, who grew up in the neighborhood near the store, remembers when the East Side was loaded with big-name and small-name supermarkets of another era: A&P, National Tea, Rudy’s and Wally’s.

“That was in the 1970s,” he said.

Jewel-Osco had a store across Jackson Street from the Certified store. Certified occupies a building previously used by Kroger.

Now that Certified Warehouse Foods is closing, too, city officials talk about the need to fill the void and concerns about a “food desert” on the East Side.

“Now, unfortunately, that’s going to be true,” said store owner Ken Clymer. “My position before was there is no food desert because we’re here.”

Family grocer

Many Certified customers walk to the store – some because it’s close and others because they have no car.

Larry Thompson, who lives nearby, said now he will likely drive to Wal-Mart – either the one on the West Side or the one in Lockport – for groceries.

“It’s bad,” Thompson said of Certified’s closing. “You have to go a long way now.”

But Darline Kotalik of Shorewood would drive past other supermarkets to get to Certified.

“They had real good meat sales here all the time, and their meat was fresh,” Kotalik said. “I’m sorry to see them go.”

Kotalik was not the only out-of-towner who drove to Certified.

Many of them came for the meat, Clymer said.

“I had six butchers, and their experience between them was almost 200 years,” he said.

Meat wasn’t the only appeal of the stores, although they had no deli and lacked some of the other attractions of a modern store. One refrigerator case at the Jackson Street store was a holdover from the Kroger store.

Competition has been “grinding away” at the business, Clymer said, since the first Wal-Mart Supercenter opened in Joliet, although it is on the other side of town. East Side dollar stores, which sell groceries including milk and eggs, also have cut into business.

“Everyone’s selling groceries,” Clymer said.

It wasn’t enough to keep the store going, but one thing Certified had was people.

Pete Toth has been with the business since it started. Sherryl Pinson and Bettye Procope were original employees at the Richards Street store, which opened in 1984.

So was Ronda Eubanks, the only head cashier the Richards Street store ever had, and someone so familiar that customers, if they did not know her name, would call her “that girl who always is there,” Clymer said.

Clymer, too, choked up at times as he talked about the store and how badly he feels about closing.

“I almost cry when I read some of the emails,” he said, sharing one he received from a customer in Braidwood.

“It is with tears streaming down my face that I feel compelled to write you,” the email begins. It goes on to say, “I will miss that family atmosphere that clearly doesn’t exist within the big box stores. I like the personal touch I received from your family of employees and, yet again, another neighborhood icon is gone.”

Clymer, who himself met his wife in a Streamwood grocery store where they both worked, may be one of the last of the independent, family grocers. His store may be one of the last of its kind.

The business, he said, was always about people.

“The employees and the customers,” he said, “they’re what kept it going.”