♪♪ [Nebbe] In Gowrie, for more than 30 years, farmers, lawyers, bankers and more have been meeting every morning to have coffee and play a simple game.

[Allan Wicklein] We call it the numbers game.

And I have a notebook here and I write down a number, since I run the show.

The numbers determine how many people actually show up.

So, if there's six of us, I pick a number between 1 and 6, 600.

And we start from the previous day.

Whoever got stuck the previous day, we start with them.

[Man] 666.

[Wicklein] 666.

And then we go around.

[Man] 781.

[Wicklein] The numbers keep getting narrower and narrower, and then somebody will pick the number I picked and they get stuck.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

[Wicklein] 799.

Thank you.

Burger.

When you get stuck, you can give me the money and everybody's coffee.

If there's 12 of us, you have to pay $12.

[Nebbe] While this long-standing tradition may have thinned local pocketbooks - [Man] Here it is.

$12.

[Nebbe] -- the winners have fortified community institutions including the grocery store that hosts the crew.

[Stacey Rasmussen] So they meet every morning from 7 to about 9.

We give them a place to sit and have their coffee and they give it back to us tenfold.

[Wicklein] And at the end of the month the money goes to Heartland Bank, put in a special account.

Then money is given out to usually the grocery store, roller rink, pool, whatever needs, you know, we feel fit to give to.

[Kathy Carlson] There's always been a store in Gowrie.

That's something that we often take for granted.

But yes, in a small town it is crucial to have and it is hard as heck to keep open.

[Nebbe] Founded in the mid-1800s, at one time Gowrie had three grocery stores as four separate train lines stopped in town.

Today only Market on Market remains.

And after being a family run business for more than half a century, the fate of the store became uncertain.

[Carlson] Jeff Peterson had ran the store from about 1986 to 2018.

Before that his dad ran the store Jamboree.

They did sell it to a different individual who had a chain of stores and that didn't last very long.

So, from 2018 to 2019 is when we started to see things trend down.

We saw trucks weren't coming in, we weren't getting the milk, the bread, the eggs, the produce.

All signs were pointing towards closure.

[Nebbe] Without its grocery store, Gowrie is what the USDA calls a food desert or a community with limited access to affordable and nutritious food.

First recognized by the Federal Government in 2008, food deserts are found across the United States in big cities to small towns.

[Marcie Boerner] So, for Gowrie having a grocery store it is so important because there is no other grocery stores within a 30-mile drive.

It's a 30-minute drive to get to Fort Dodge, it's a 30-minute drive to get to Jefferson, it's a 30-minute drive to Ogden.

So, we're kind of the center of this radius that does not have access to a grocery store.

[Rasmussen] Gary's about a thousand people.

There's people in town that they can't get to other grocery stores.

You know, there are a lot of times they're older people and they don't get the whole online thing.

And this is a place for them to come and they meet their friends and they shop and they laugh and you know, we try and make it as welcoming as we can.

[Boerner] So, when we determined that we could potentially be next and we started getting involved in how do we save our grocery store, the timing was so short that we were really concerned we wouldn't be able to find a new buyer.

So that's when we decided we needed to go to the community.

[Nebbe] In early January 2020, community leaders held a public meeting in front of a standing room only crowd.

More than 150 people showed up to learn a new buyer was unlikely to be found and keeping the store open would require community support.

With a shutdown weeks away, the town would need to form an LLC and raise $250,000 to buy the building, equipment and stock the shelves.

[Boerner] We were very clear that that was not necessarily going to be a money-making situation.

It was to keep the business that we have open.

[Carlson] It's for profit, but we're not making a huge profit.

We were very straightforward with them and said, this is not an investment that you're going to see a return on.

[Boerner] But I think a lot of people were very happy about the idea that I'm investing in the future of the community.

[Nebbe] Nine days after the initial community meeting, 60 people came forward to donate to the cause and officially become the new owners of the soon to be named Market on Market grocery store.

In just over a week, Gowrie went from the brink of becoming a food desert to raising $250,000 and saving a town staple.

[Carlson] It was right after we purchased the store.

I was working here late at night trying to get things cleaned up, and I had a call from my youngest daughter and she said, did we do it?

And I said, do what?

She said, did we save the store?

And I said, we did it.

♪♪ (rooster crowing) [Nebbe] Half a decade later, Market on Market is still open.

However, the store's success required federal grants, zero interest loans, and surprisingly, Gowrie being recognized as a food desert allowed the store to partner with a nonprofit fundraising arm which has made the store viable.

[Carlson] Without that fund, we would have been closed a long time ago.

You know, we've had over $100,000 given to that foundation that we've been able to replace our roof, our heating.

We've been able to update our point-of-sale system.

We've received over $15,000, I think, in the last three years from the coffee guys.

[Wicklein] The grocery stores needed help and we have given them a lot of money over the last many years.

We enjoy doing it and everybody has fun.

It ain't fun when you get stuck and you have to pay, but there's guys been playing for 30, 40 years and it's kind of a cool thing that we like to do.

♪♪