This week is Small Business Week in America, and in honor of our own small businesses here in Grinnell, The S&B’s Mayo Sueta spoke to a few of the owners of Grinnell’s most popular small businesses about how their businesses got started, from more modern staples of Grinnell’s downtown to long-time fixtures of the Grinnell Community. Sarina Lincoln took the photos of these local icons.
“From a very young age, like literally three or four years old, coffee had always been a big part of my life. Like a lot of my memories involved drinking coffee with my grandpa … my dad drinks coffee, it’s just like a … social staple in my life. I went to college [and] I got a degree in merchandising, so I did retail for a really long time and then I came home and decided that [owning Saints Rest] would be a really cool idea … I could incorporate one of my passions — which is coffee — with the background I have in retail.” -Sandra “Sam” Cock
“I started in Grinnell because I thought that they needed a bike shop and that there … were good employers in the Grinnell area because, you know, when people have jobs they have money to buy things, so that’s how come I chose Grinnell.” -Craig Cooper
“I’m the second owner of Prairie Canary. The first owner was Carly Groben, and what happened was that … she basically won a restaurant … The City and the Chamber of Commerce [had] a contest called Iowa’s Best Bite and they just took in applications. … I think they had 40 or 60 applications and they just chose the best one … Through that Ms. Groben was able to open the Prairie Canary.” -Paul Durr
“[McNally’s] was started by a man who … worked for a cattle yard [that] butchered meat way back in the day, and then they would put it on a horse drawn wagon and he would deliver that into the town … He started doing that and then opened up his little store … where the movie theatre is now and he had a little storefront and then it kinda’ grew as people started … buying groceries in grocery stores as opposed to having them delivered to them. And then eventually [McNally’s] moved down to [our] neck of the woods, and we bought the business in 1988, and that’s kind of how it started.” -Julie Smith
