Family-run grocer Ed's Way closing after 30 years to make way for townhomes

After more than 30 years, Ed’s Way Food Mart, a beloved Forest Park grocery store, will shut its doors Sunday to make way for a planned 10-unit townhome building.

The store’s shelves are almost empty in its final week, but the place is full of memories, according to owner Ed Nutley, 86. Generations of customers have come to say goodbye, including former summer employees hired as teenagers, now grown with children of their own.

There have been a lot of hugs and tears, Nutley said. “It’s a place where people could come and meet in the aisles. Kids came in. It’s a meeting place,” he said.

Nutley, who opened the family-owned store in 1991, plans to retire. His son Mike, 66, who runs daily operations, also plans to take a break.

In 2018, Ed Nutley announced plans to retire and sell the business. But Ed’s Way didn’t immediately find a buyer and then the pandemic hit. Now, after decades of helming the independent grocer through recessions, the advent of the internet, a deadly pandemic and soaring inflation, Ed Nutley pictures himself traveling and “fishing and drinking and doing nothing.”

The store, at 946 Beloit Ave., is such a cherished neighborhood landmark that last month it received its own honorary street name, Ed Nutley Way. About 100 people braved the wintry weather, Ed said, to attend the ceremony, officiated by Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins, local officials and loyal customers.

“I was so shocked to see so many people at the unveiling. It was so cold too,” Ed Nutley said. “I was overwhelmed. You have to make sure you don’t start crying.”

Mike Nutley said the store is a place where people feel at home. “This place is like Cheers. We know everybody; we know their kids.”

But he won’t miss the long hours. During the pandemic, he was up at 4 a.m. to find goods and supplies to stock the store.

"Our meat department was never empty. Jewel [Osco] was empty," he said.

Mike Nutley said he now plans to “start living." He won’t be working seven days a week, including Christmas and other holidays.

“On Saturdays, I’ll probably be sitting down watching college football,” Mike Nutley said, though he acknowledged he might get bored.

Losing a local grocer

The shop sits across from a school and sold everything from milk and toilet paper to lottery tickets.

At recent village council meetings, locals pushed back on the decision to re-zone the property to residential use ahead of its planned conversion to townhomes.

When Ed Nutley bought the shop in the early 1990s, it had already been a family-run grocer. “There’s been a store on this corner since the 1930s. The previous family was here over 60 years,” Mike Nutley said.

Lindsay Baish-Flynn has been an Ed’s Way customer since moving to Forest Park nine years ago. She shopped there several times each week and said they even gave her toddler a Christmas present last year.

The Nutleys “have been so good to my family and everyone in the community,” she said. “That is part of what makes this loss difficult.”

Baish-Flynn lamented the loss of a family-owned and community-centered businesses in the Chicago suburbs. “Ed's Way was a real outlier. Not only was it a walkable, accessible resource for groceries, it also often acted as a community hub,” she said.

Chicago developer Michael Leydervuder purchased Ed's Way for $600,000, according to Nutleys' broker David King. Listing details on LoopNet said the store was about 9,000 square feet on a 0.36 acre site. Leydervuder could not be reached for comment.

King, president of Oak Park commercial real estate firm David King & Associates, said he and the family hoped for a buyer that would want to run a grocery store but there were no takers.

For smaller stores, “it’s really hard to earn a living. They can’t compete with big stores,” he said. High interest rates in recent years have dampened real estate sales and development, he said.

“Bigger stores have buying power," Ed Nutley said. "They have their own warehouses. They can buy in bulk. When they have pop on sale, we couldn’t even buy it for that price.”

Mike Nutley said, “The grocery business is cutthroat. There’s not much profit unless you’re doing high volumes. Then every time you turn around, property taxes are up, utilities go up.”

King understands residents’ concerns about losing the store.

“Of course people are sad. It’s been a neighborhood institution for 30-plus years,” he said. “It’s understandable, but it’s just not possible. It’s not the world we live in anymore.” Small-business owners like the Nutleys are “hanging in for as long as they can until they’re ready to retire.”

Forest Park Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Laurie Kokenes said in an emailed statement that Ed’s Way “will truly be missed. Although their absence leaves a big void, we understand that business owners retire. This is a success story and we wish the Nutley family all the best in their retirement.”