Panhandle community joins together to open store
RED BAY (AP) – Rumor has it that a stranger walked into the Red Bay Grocery one day, looked around and asked no one in particular, “Who owns this place?” Her curiosity turned to confusion when about a dozen hands shot up.
Had all 54 owners been present, the visitor would have been even more surprised, because no one who holds a piece of this little jewel is embarrassed to let people know. According to Katie Barrineau, the store’s manager and a stockholder, 54 is the number of Red Bay’s 100 or so residents who have a stake in the grocery.
The Red Bay Grocery actually is far more than a grocery. For one thing, it is Red Bay’s only retail outlet. It also is a restaurant, where breakfast, lunch and Friday night dinners are served. However, the grocery’s most important function is as a gathering place.
“It’s just a place to come, sit on the porch, get a cup of coffee and wait for somebody to come by to talk,” grocery co-owner Wayne Miller said. “Some people come over three and four times a day,” added Charles Morgan, another co-owner.
The unincorporated community of Red Bay lies on the eastern border of Walton County between DeFuniak Springs to the north and Freeport to the south. It is bisected by State Road 81, not busy U.S. Highway 331.
Its original settlers were Scottish, locals say, and they mingled with an established American Indian population. Miller said there are graves in an old cemetery in town that date back to the 1700s.
Red Bay could best be described as a farming community. Its residents do a lot of hunting and fishing along the Choctawhatchee River. The big event is an annual Thanksgiving Day festival.
It is a community so close-knit that residents share its churches.
There are three of them in Red Bay. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches sit side by side. The Baptist church is across the street.
There aren’t enough people to fill the churches, so two of them are locked on Sunday so everyone can gather in one place.
Folks that interested in praying together can surely share ownership of a small business. Right?
They have done pretty well since the business’ opening Feb. 20.
“Everyone that comes in is in a good mood,” said Barrineau, the store’s manager.
Morgan, better known as the owner of Harbor Docks restaurant in Destin, is the person most responsible for the community ownership plan that launched the Red Bay Grocery.
The building was constructed, near as anybody can tell, sometime around 1936.
It served as a store for most of its life. However, in recent years it had been vacant more than it was occupied and become an eyesore, said Ouida Rigdon-Miller, the grocery’s next-door neighbor and, of course, a co-owner.
“Nobody kept it much over a year,” Rigdon-Miller said.
The plan to create the Red Bay Grocery was hatched at Rigdon-Miller’s supper table, a place where sumptuous country meals are served daily.