Apple Market will close its Wellington location within in the next month due to lagging sales and a downturn in the economy, owner Tim Voegeli said Tuesday. The company’s Winfield location will remain open.
"Winfield’s doing fine," Voegeli said by phone. "It’s actually been able to hold its own fairly well."
Employees at the Apple Market in Wellington learned over the past several days that their store would close. About 14 people currently work at the market, which is located just a block from the downtown area.
The store will have a sale to help thin down the number of items on its shelves and then transfer remaining inventory to other stores.
Voegeli said a number of factors played into the closing of the Wellington location. Chief among them was competition from Wal-Mart, which opened a super store there less than two years ago.
"Obviously, there are X amount of dollars to spend on groceries in smaller towns," he said. "Wal-Mart’s hurt us."
The Wellington location is the smallest of three stores Voegeli operates. Wellington Apple Market’s 12,000 square foot storee is 1,000 square feet smaller than the company’s store in Rose Hill and well under half the size of the 27,000 square feet Winfield location.
Size helps Winfield sell at a higher volume and offer better variety, Voegeli said. And the store is across town from Winfield’s two other grocery stores, Dillons’ and Wal-Mart, which has probably helped to retain a number of loyal customers, he said.
The Wellington Apple Market is smaller, older and there are equipment and leasing issues that need to be addressed soon. The store is also in the downtown area and off the highway where Dillons’ and Wal-Mart are located.
"It was really just time to make a decision about whether it would stay open," Voegeli said. "So that’s what we did."
Voegeli grew up in Peck ? a small Sumner County town near the Sedgwick County line ? and remembers when Wellington’s downtown thrived economically. That’s not true anymore, he said.
"Winfield’s got its problems with empty buildings downtown," Voegeli said. "But the economy there is not nearly as depressed as the economy in Wellington. I think Wellington was really counting on the (state-sanctioned) casino project, and that didn’t pan out."
Voegeli bought the Winfield and Wellington stores in 1999 and has owned the Rose Hill location since 1989.
