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Variety Remains the Spice of Life at Hartman’s in Athens
athens, business, hartman's variety store, retail, shopping,
Got a yearning for an old-style variety store, the kind where you can find just about anything? Then head over to Hartman’s Variety Store, an Athens landmark since 1911. Long johns? Got ’em. School supplies? Check. Groceries? Yep. As founder T.A. Hartman reportedly said, “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”
This is not to say that the store’s never changed at all. Hartman’s did build a new building – in 1922, right in front of the original store. Current owner Jim Hartman, the third generation of the family to run the operation, offers up a mix of history, merchandise and, since the 1980s, home cooking. They even fed the press corps when President Bush visited Wausau in 2005.
“We realized that the big stores can handle groceries more efficiently than we do,” Jim Hartman says. “We don’t offer 20 kinds of tomatoes. We’ve expanded our dollar area, and our heat-and-eat meals are fresh, never frozen, and they’re pretty popular so far. We’re hoping to create a niche that we can live in, and eventually even have a delivery route for them.”
Story by Joe Morris
