Inside Ott's

Ott’s Grocery, in a small white frame building, continues to thrive, brimming with groceries, supplies, conversation, and memories.

Before she could say her ABCs, Brittainy Ott was learning to count change in her family’s grocery store. Sitting in her grandfather’s lap between the candy counter and cash register, she carefully would place each coin in his wrinkled hand and, in a childlike sing-song voice, declare “25, 50, 75, $1.”

“You had to count it back perfect,” recalls Brittainy, now 15 and a part-time cashier at Ott’s Grocery in eastern Kentucky. “Pawpaw wanted both me and my sister to know how, I guess, so we could help him in the store someday.”

Brittainy represents the fifth generation in a family owned and operated business that spans at least 120 years and stands along Highway 80 as the steady hub of the small community known as Swiss Colony, about six miles west of London, Ky.

‘This store is a landmark’

Ott’s Grocery, in a small white frame building, continues to thrive, brimming with groceries, supplies, conversation, and memories.

“They’ve raised most people’s children around here,” says Arvel Reed, who runs a local auto salvage yard and comes in twice a day for a “bull session and a cup of coffee.”

“It’s a good place to loaf,” adds Kenneth Bender, 70, who was born a half mile away and remembers buying sugar and mill flour at Ott’s as a child.

Over the years, Ott’s Grocery has served as a feed shop, hardware store, post office, and unofficial information center. It was the place you went to have your baby weighed on the store scales, your dog’s collar engraved or, if you were a child, to trade in your empty pop bottles for a few extra pennies. You could buy a fishing license, gingham cloth, a pair of boots, or a cold bottle of pop. It also was a good place to talk about hunting, politics, Kentucky basketball, or last Sunday’s sermon.

Surviving three moves, the current store building opened in 1932 and has watched Highway 80 go from a dirt road to gravel and now four-lane blacktop. “This store is a landmark around here,” says Beverly Bender, who runs the business today with her brother, Rick Ott, and their mother, Jean Ott. “Everybody knows where Ott’s Grocery is.”

Beverly and Rick’s great-grandparents founded the store in about 1881 soon after immigrating from Switzerland. Paul Ott had been a silk weaver in the old country, but he and wife Elesa opted to open a grocery and dry goods store here as Swiss Colony became a haven for other immigrants. Locals called them Vattie and Muttie, which is Swiss for father and mother.

At the turn of the century, customers brought cowhides, beeswax, eggs, and yellow root for the Otts to take to market weekly in the town of Pittsburgh. Elesa operated a flower room and trimmed hats. She also made and sold authentic Swiss cheese.

The couple’s grandson, Bud Ott, bought the store in 1947. Bud and his wife, Jean, raised their three children in their home on the second story of the two-story grocery building. “We were always at work, but we were also always at home,” says Jean, now 78.

Bud ran the business until his death in 1995 and, during those years, became a beloved and unforgettable personality among the people of Swiss Colony and beyond.

“He was always here, never took a vacation,” says daughter Beverly. “He loved this store, inside and out.”

Family members say Bud Ott had his own business philosophy: First, the customer is always right; second, never put off anything until tomorrow that you can do today. He never opened the store on Sunday, saying that if you couldn’t make a living in six days, there was no point keeping it open a seventh because “that was God’s day.”

He let the neighboring Baptist church use his parking lot for overflow on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. And whenever a funeral procession went by, he closed the store as a gesture of respect.

Children especially loved him. They remember how Bud handed out suckers to toddlers, greeted them in Swiss, and let them climb on large sacks of feed in the back room.

“For those of us who grew up in the Colony, and for those of us who live there now and have raised our children there, (Bud’s death was) ... the end of an era,” June Woodyard wrote in a letter to the local newspaper.

With a wreath on the store’s door and a long line of visitors stretching outside the funeral home, locals worried Ott’s Grocery would die soon, too. But Bud’s widow and two of their children saw otherwise.

Changing for the better

Six days a week, from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Ott’s still has a constant stream of customers and conversation. An early morning crowd comes in for coffee and doughnuts, and a lunch crowd buys sandwiches made-to-order by Jean and her daughter. Among the most popular items: Jean’s homemade chili, of which she sells more than three gallons a day, mainly for chili dogs. Rick Ott typically runs the cash register and is quick with a laugh and a story as he greets customers.

The 1,600-square-foot store has an equally friendly ambiance, all undergirded by a worn wooden floor.

Fishing rods, hunting boots, and swim toys hang from the ceiling, and the aisles below are stocked with most any item you’d ever need. Near the store’s entrance is a bulletin board laden with yard sale notices and pictures of fishermen with their latest catch. Overhead and off to the left is a small television usually set to the Weather Channel but on this particular morning is turned to The Price is Right. The aroma of a feed store wafts through a small adjoining room further left, where sack upon sack is piled high on the floor.

Despite the old-fashioned retail charm, change hasn’t escaped Ott’s, particularly in the last few years. Two years ago, they took out the huge black pot-bellied stove that had anchored the center of the store and heated the place for generations, because it was going to cost the Otts an extra $1,000 annually in insurance. “Nostalgia was just too high a price,” Beverly says. “People fussed and hollered over it, but we really didn’t have a choice.”

Then came the biggest change of all when, last spring, the Otts reorganized the store so customers could gather their groceries and supplies themselves. For the previous century-plus, large counters had separated customers from goods that the Otts gathered upon request. All three glass showcases, including a candy counter popular with the children, are now gone.

“Some customers were real upset,” Beverly recalls. “They said, ‘You took my candy counter. You took my bench out. I’m lost’ ... But sometimes you have to make changes to make things better.”

Some things will never change, though, they promise.

The family still keeps a ledger of running accounts for longtime customers. They still, on occasion, make home deliveries. And they still give out lots of information, directions, and free advice.

“If the ambulance goes down the road, people call our store to find out why,” Beverly says. Adds Rick, “If someone’s had surgery, they call for an update. If someone needs to know the best time to wean their baby from the bottle, plant their seed, or de-horn their cattle, they call us for that, too. We have an almanac and we know how to read it.”

Will there be a fifth-generation Ott’s Grocery?

Brittainy hopes so. Of Jean’s eight grandchildren, she’s the only one interested in running the store one day. “Maybe even pass it down to my kids,” she says.

Her father likes the idea but worries about creeping development along Highway 80. “Everything’s coming out this way, and I suspect ... (they) may come one day and squeeze us out,” Rick says. But Ott’s has survived three moves and a road that changed from dirt to gravel to pavement. It’s bound to endure whatever comes along.

“It’ll be hard to ever close down Ott’s Grocery,” Rick Ott says. “It’ll be hard.”

Marta W. Aldrich is a freelance writer based in Franklin, Tenn.

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