A year and a half after a fire, Cook, Minn., is getting its grocery store back

A year and a half after a fire destroyed the only grocery store in the small northern Minnesota city of Cook, a bigger and better replacement is reopening this spring.

Construction at the Zup's Food Market is zipping along, and while no firm date is set, the store is expected to open sometime in May.

For the 570-some residents of Cook, and for those heading to Lake Vermilion or other North Woods destinations, it's a long-awaited return of a community staple.

"They are excited — there's an end in sight," said Cook store manager Matt Zupancich, whose family has owned grocery stores across the Iron Range for more than a century. "When you need to travel for everything, that hurts a small town."

A fire destroyed the 20-year-old store in November 2018, leaving residents looking at a 25-mile drive to the nearest full-service grocery store in Tower or Virginia.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined. The effects were immediate.

"First there was a lot of pain and feeling bad for employees there losing jobs," said Tom Ojanen, president of the Cook Chamber of Commerce. "The next thing is people had to drive to do their shopping — and as long as folks were in bigger towns, many local businesses did see a drop-off."

Business owners are optimistic that traffic will return now that there is an end in sight to Cook's tenure as a food desert, Ojanen said.

Rural Minnesotans have watched countless grocers close in recent decades, and a University of Minnesota study said in 2016 that nearly two-thirds of those that remain planned to leave the business within the next 10 years.

"The town was nervous for a while about not having it," Ojanen said. "It's a big part of everybody's daily life."

Lois Garbisch, who lives along the Little Fork River about a mile and a half from Zup's, said she "really had to learn how to plan" without the store. Because she has some difficulty walking, larger stores posed a problem beyond the time it took to get there.

"It was hard for me. I'm a very dedicated shop-local person — and who wants to drive an hour total to shop?" said Garbisch, 70.

A small-scale temporary replacement, dubbed Mini Zup's, opened close to the original in September. Garbisch said it has been a relief to be able to find fresh produce and meat and other necessities locally again, though the full store will be a welcome return to normalcy.

The rebuild, really an upgrade, is underway at the same site of the burned store along Hwy. 53, the main road through town. Last year the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board approved a $350,000 grant for site work as part of the $5.1 million project.

"It will be a bigger store and have a hot deli in there," said Jim Zupancich, manager of the Ely store and one of several family members still involved in the business. "It will be a modernized, very nice-looking store."

The first Zup's opened in Ely in 1916 and today has locations in Tower, Silver Bay and Babbitt. The store in Babbitt was also rebuilt following a fire in the past decade.

Fire claimed another Cook grocery store, an IGA, in 2003, leaving Zup's the only grocer in town.

Jim Zupancich said the exact timing of the reopening comes down to how fast the concrete floor can dry: "We're getting it done as fast as we can — we've got a good group of people there."

Brooks Johnson • 218-491-6496