On Wednesday, January 31st, Peres Food Basket on 2nd Avenue North closed its doors for the last time. The store has been owned by Laurie Peres for a little over 25 years. However, due to her deteriorating eyesight over the past year, Peres was forced to step down and make the difficult decision to sell the store.
In September a buyer was found, but he didn’t want the inventory of the store. The Peres family lowered the inventory which in turn cost them valued customers. The buyer backed out on the last day, unfortunately it was too late to recover.
Virginia Peres, known to many as Charlie, and her younger sister Jacque have spent many years growing up helping take care of the store. Although they each have two other jobs, they have still been trying to help as much as they can with the store. “Hopefully somebody else will buy it, but as of right now, we just can’t keep doing It so it’s going to stay up for sale,” explained Charlie.
“When they first bought it back when I was 13 or 14, my dad was involved, but he has since passed on,” explained Charlie. “It was just him and my mom that ran it. We pretty much put our life and soul into it.”
This little gem of a store has many fond memories not only for the Peres family but also for the neighborhood.
“We used to do Friday night movies,” explained Charlie. “This is back in the Hastings days when we could go rent the newest something that came out that was, PG, PG13. We’d play it out here for free and offer free popcorn and then they would come in and buy drinks and stuff. It was really good for the neighborhood kids because they weren’t out getting into trouble.”
The family also held block parties back in the day and Saturday barbecues. “My mom would cook burgers and stuff,” explained Charlie. “And we would have a lot of our local elderly ladies that would have jellies and jams and salsas. We had two different ladies who made all kinds of stuff like pillowcases and quilts.”
“We did tie dye Friday for the longest time,” explained Charlie. “Every Friday if you came in wearing tie dye, you could get a free fountain pop or coffee. There are a couple of little daycares around here, and every Friday they would bring all their little daycare kids over here and get free little mini slush puppies.”
“My mom has just been a staple around here. I would say she’s always been one to give you the shirt off her back. That’s just how she is. If kids came in here in the morning and needed breakfast, she would buy them breakfast. On Halloween, she usually did either king-size, candy bars or hot chocolate, you know, because everybody’s walking around in the cold. My mom’s always done really cool stuff to get the community involved and whatnot, but it’s definitely the end of an era.”
Author: Karen Anderson
Karen is the Editor-in-Chief overseeing all news operations at Foxys Publishing Co. She also loves photography and spending time with her dogs.
