- Ward's Supermarket in Gainesville has thrived for 75 years due to its family-owned legacy, personalized service, and fresh local products including homemade sausage.
- The store expanded in 1991 to NW 23rd Avenue, incorporating natural whole foods and employs 93 workers, standing as a rare family-owned grocer in Alachua County.
Well, perhaps it’s not so much a secret.
From the moment customers walk into the long brown Ward’s Supermarket building off NW 23rd Avenue in Gainesville, cashiers, managers, tea baggers, watermelon sorters and meat butchers alike greet newcomers with smiles and regulars by name.
If they don’t know your name, they’ll learn it by the time you leave.
These smiles and greetings are seasoned with smells of fresh in-season fruits and vegetables, blooming flowers, self-serve spices, teas and local meats and cheeses that just don’t saturate the aisles of big box grocers quite the same.
“We’ve got folks from out of Georgia that come down just because of our varieties of sausage. We make our own sausage,” said store manager and owner Danielle Ward. “If you want to have a gourmet supper, we’ve got everything gourmet for you to make it with.”
Danielle and her brother, Bryan, are the local grocer’s fourth generation of Ward family owners. She said there’s been one ingredient Ward’s has sourced over its 75 years in operation that’s resulted in decades of service to the community and built its hometown reputation as the go-to local grocer.
“The employees,” she said. “So many people just love coming here because it feels like family.”
That family feel among employees dates back all the way back to 1951, into the dirt floors of Danielle and Bryan’s great-grandfather J.B. Ward’s lean-to produce stand off NW 6th Street.
The stand, screened in with chicken wire, served as the original Ward’s, selling pecans and all kinds of local produce. Gainesville residents still remember the first employees who gave it a heart for family.
“My mother was a schoolmate of Mrs. Ward and later she held me as an infant while my mother shopped. That was [67] years ago and now I continue to shop at Wards,” said a Facebook user named Sheila Sisk in a post.
Ward’s regular Allen Hickmon, 85, has shopped at the grocer since it first opened, and he intends to keep doing so.
“They have good products and they got friendly people,” Hickmon said while sifting through a bin of green peanuts. “That combination, now, you can’t go wrong.”
As Ward’s continued to grow its business, so did the need for more space and refrigeration. In 1979, the family replaced the stand with a new refrigeration-equipped building, which now serves as the grocer’s warehouse building today.
The NW 6th Street location would prove serendipitous for the Ward family’s next expansion.
J.B. Ward’s grandson, Billy, met a girl named Trish at Doug’s Dairy Twirl ice cream and hamburger shop next door, according to the grocer’s website. Trish came to work at Ward’s and married Billy soon after. The couple eventually took over the store’s ownership, forging vital memories and influences for their children, Danielle and Bryan.
“I was in it from the time I was born. They brought me to work and I was put in a playpen,” Danielle said. “We did a school project in the first grade, and my little report was what would you want to do when you grow up? And I said, ‘Ward’s Supermarket.’ I knew at a very young age I wanted to be a part of it.”
The current NW 23rd Avenue building, formerly Norman’s Country Market, became available in 1991 after the owner fled to Costa Rica, accused of tax evasion.
With the help of a loan from the late National Vacuum owner Bob de Rochemont, Danielle said her dad went to the bank and secured the building for Ward’s before it even had a chance to go up for sale. The transition to the new store took just one day with all hands on deck.
“It was a big difference,” Danielle said. “I don’t know if it was just the square footage of the building, but I think the location on NW 23rd Avenue was a lot better as far as traffic. This location has been very, very good to us, and gearing it towards what Gainesville wanted, as far as goods, definitely helped as well.”
That gearing of goods included expanding Ward’s natural wholefood offerings—vitamins, bulk spices, grains, nuts and seeds—a knowledge base Danielle said the early 90s didn’t carry. But Russ Welker did.
Having owned his own grocery stores in the area, Danielle said Welker came to Ward’s with a wealth of experience operating sustainable and organic practices. He added Ward’s natural whole food and wine departments and also oversees the plants.
Now 33 years since he came to Ward’s, customers can still spot the natural foods manager stocking the store aisles today with products from hundreds of different vendors. Danielle said even with all the knowledge Ward’s has garnered over the years, every employee is taught to keep learning.
“We always try to take the customer with [employees] to find that certain product,” she said. “So we learn knowledge through our customers’ questions most of the time, and hands-on. Instead of turning the customer loose, we go with them and we find out the answer.”
Today, Ward’s employs 93 workers. After Hitchcock’s Markets sold all 10 of its area locations in October, Ward’s Supermarket stands as one of Alachua County’s last remaining family-owned grocers.
Danielle said keeping weekly prices competitive and finding the right employees have been the biggest challenges of the past 75 years.
She said the COVID-19 pandemic has squelched staffing levels and has made it difficult to find people that want to work and want to work with people.
“If you don’t have the happiness of the employees, it’s going to be felt by the customers,” she said.
But once the right ones are in, they’re in for the long haul, like 89-year-old George Jones.
Looking out across the line of cashiers, Jones’ head of white hair stands out among the others. He said he started at the store when Billy and Trish ran it and Danielle and Bryan first came to work there. What keeps him coming back?
“Everybody’s nice, it’s just like a big family,” Jones said.
Danielle said Ward’s aims to celebrate its 75 years by continuing to serve the community with family and freshness for many years to come.
“Come in and feel the local difference, because it is unique,” she said.
