Answer Man: What happened to Consumers Markets, Git-n-Go?

Don Wilson of Springfield sent me a question via an actual hand-written letter delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. On the back of the envelope he wrote: "My Brother, Please Remain Calm."

This got my attention.

Q: Can you provide any details as to why the Consumers Markets grocery stores and the Git-n-Go convenience stores disappeared from the Springfield scene? They once had multiple locations in Springfield. P.S. Please Remain Calm.

I will do my best, Mr. Wilson.

I'll start with Consumers Markets, which was based in Springfield and in the early 1990s was the largest grocery chain in the Ozarks with 38 stores in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

The chain at one time operated in buildings now occupied, for example, by Vatterott College, 3850 S. Campbell Ave.; Hobby Lobby, 1535 E. Battlefield Drive; the Missouri Career Center, 2900 E. Sunshine St., in the Southern Hills Shopping Center; and Price Cutter, 1730 S. Campbell Ave., which, coincidentally, is scheduled to close March 31.

Curtis Jared is the 36-year-old grandson of Clarence Wheeler, the Springfield native who founded Consumers Markets in 1948.

On a historical note, seven years later three people died in a June 28, 1955, blaze at a Springfield Consumers Markets store after fireworks-for-sale caught fire. City Council quickly moved to ban fireworks sales within the city, a law that remains in effect today. Two young Springfield sisters and an unrelated 56-year-old woman died in the fire.

Consumers Markets in 1990 sold its grocery-store business to Fleming Companies, Inc., which at the time was the largest wholesale seller of food to grocery stores in the U.S.

Jared tells me Fleming expected efficiencies in being the exclusive wholesale supplier of food items to its new acquisition — the Consumers Markets grocery stores.

Unfortunately, he adds, Fleming was much better at selling food to grocery stores than it was at operating them.

"Fleming took a different approach to things," says Jared, whose father Jerry Jared was once president and chief executive officer of Consumers Markets. "They took the smaller stores and sold them off. They wanted to focus on the bigger markets and the bigger stores."

In 1997, Curtis Jared says, his grandfather died and his father retired from the business. Two years later, there were no more Consumers Markets in operation.

Fleming Companies filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and emerged a few years later as a different company, one without grocery stores.

Curtis Jared is president and chief executive officer of Jared Enterprises. It is a real estate investment, development and management company.

On to Git-n-Go.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004. Kum & Go, based in West Des Moines, Iowa, purchased the 68 Git-n-Go convenience stores in Missouri and Oklahoma. Thirty-two of them were in Southwest Missouri.

I grabbed city directory gathering dust in the newsroom and found the following addresses for Git-n-Gos in the city in 1998: 2782 W. Republic Road, 2404 E. Sunshine St. and 3416 S. National Ave.

All three are currently Kum & Go stores.

I hope that helps, Mr. Wilson, my brother.

Keep those questions coming. Send them to The Answer Man at 836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail at 651 N. Boonville, Springfield, MO 65806. These are the views of Steve Pokin, the News-Leader's columnist.