Fareway on its way to Byron

There are a few things that every small city should have, such as a city hall, a police and fire department, a post office, a gas station, and a grocery store.
Well, soon Byron will be able to check off that last box as Fareway is officially coming to town after a groundbreaking ceremony was held on Monday, Oct. 28.
Byron Mayor Daryl Glassmaker is glad to see this store coming to fruition after being in the works for about a year.
“When the [previous grocery] store closed down, myself, the [city] administrator, and the staff started trying to find a store. We’re calling around to see who’d be interested in opening up a grocery store so we contacted quite a few of them. At that point, we contacted Fareway and they thought we fit perfectly with their small town atmosphere. They were interested so they said, ‘Let’s meet,’ so we had a couple meetings and started the process,” he said.
He expects the Fareway to be opening sometime around late next spring or early summer.
Whenever it opens, he said, its impact on the city will be substantial.
“It’s going to great for Byron and the community around us, because there’s a lot of traffic down on the highway so once this is built, the people will come,” Glassmaker said. “We’ve actually had people, out of town people, ask us when it’s going to be built. It’s going to help Byron absolutely, but I think it’s going to be more of the community too, Kasson, Dodge Center people and even from Rochester,” he said. “When they closed the Fareway down there [Rochester], people have asked when they’re going to get the one in Byron done so it’s going to draw people, but it’s definitely going to help Byron obviously and we’re glad for that because we miss this, having the local grocery store. It’s great for everybody.”
Glassmaker said having that local grocery store is critical.
“It’s very important, because otherwise you have people going eight miles to Rochester. It’s nothing against Rochester, but Byron likes to shop local. Once people get to Byron at the end of the night, they don’t want to go back to Rochester so that was missing where you had a store where people could go there and do their full-blown grocery shopping. It’s nice to be in Rochester, but once they get to Byron, it’s nice to have it local,” he said.
“We hear so many good things about the Fareway in Stewartville, we really have. They have a great meat department, we hear a lot about that so I think they’re just a great quality organization and they want to be in small towns like Byron,” he said. “It fits perfect with us.”
The store will be located at 1072 4th St. NE in Byron.