Grocery chain closing location in Clinton County. Walmart’s fault?

A grocery store that has operated in Carlyle for more than 70 years is closing.

Schuette’s Markets, which also operates grocery stores in Troy, Highland and Breese, is closing its Carlyle location.

Tessa Wiegman, vice president of administration for Schuette’s, said the Carlyle store has begun selling inventory at reduced prices. She expects the store to be closed by the end of August.

“It was a tough decision for my family to make,” Wiegman said. “It was not made easily, I can tell you that.”

She added, “It was kind of a plethora of reasons. First of all, the traffic in Carlyle has kind of shifted away from downtown. The people who come to Carlyle to utilize the lake, they have no reason to come downtown.”

Carlyle has two other grocery stores, including a Super Walmart located closer to the lake.

On the Carlyle store’s Facebook page, a number of Facebook users placed the blame squarely on Walmart.

“We agree,” the store replied in one post. “It is sad for the community. Soon there will be very few independently-owned, mom-and-pop businesses.”

The Carlyle store has been a fixture at the intersection of Illinois 127 and old U.S. 50. Under Schuette ownership, it was a Piggly Wiggly for many years, and then a Super Valu. In the past couple of years, the Schuette company has changed the name of all of its Supervalu stores to Schuette’s Markets.

Schuette owns the Carlyle building and will be trying to sell it.

“We have been talking with private companies to sell it. We will be putting it up for sale if we’re not able to sell it to these private companies,” Wiegman said.

Wiegman said there are no plans to close any of the other Schuette’s locations.

“Oh, no, no, no. All of the other stores are doing very well. We’re excited that we can focus on those now,” Wiegman said.

She said all of the Carlyle employees have accepted positions at other Schuette’s Market locations, except for one, who was semi-retired and has chosen to fully retire. Several of the employees are going to the Breese store.

“We know that a lot of our customers at Carlyle really like the employees there,” Wiegman said. “We’d be happy if those customers transitioned to the Breese store.”

This story was originally published August 11, 2016 at 3:47 PM with the headline "Grocery chain closing location in Clinton County. Walmart’s fault?."