Highland Roots Market Has Opened in Monterey

There’s a new grocery store that’s opened in Monterey.  It’s called Highland Roots Market.  It opened on July 12 and Rachel Hiner is the owner.

“We are a new produce and grocery market,” says Hiner.  “We have a lot of local produce, as well as organic and more healthier options for grocery items and we’re trying to get as many affordable staples as we can as well.  So far, it’s been great.  We’ve been really busy and we’ve been getting a lot of good feedback.  My favorite is when people come in and tell me stories about my grandfather.  People who remember, he used to come up here and sell tomatoes out of the back of his truck.”

Highland Roots Market is located at 11 East Main Street in Monterey on the corner of Route 220 and Route 250.   It’s open 10am to 6pm, seven days a week.

“We’ve been visiting here my whole life and in most recent years we considered living here, but I always thought ‘I can’t live an hour away from a grocery store’,” says Hiner.  “So, we moved here and then I also managed the Farmers Market last summer and that was really nice to be able to have fresh produce, but it wasn’t everything I needed.  I still had to go to the grocery store, over the mountain, once a week and, so yeah, I guess I just decided to open a grocery store and see how it went.”

Future plans include offering BBQ and pizza dinner nights.  Plans are also in the works to add beer and wine to the inventory and to offer SNAP and Virginia Fresh Match benefits.

“We had really conservative estimates of how many people would come in and what we had thought people would come in, in a week, are coming in every day, so that’s the biggest surprise and all the positive feedback and just a lot of people I didn’t know who live here, I’m meeting all new people which is also really cool,” says Hiner.  “A lot of people who have excess produce in their gardens have been bringing me stuff and I’m happy to buy produce excess and put it in the store.  We want everything to be as local as possible during the growing season here.”

Hiner and her husband, Andrew Clark, are running the market now and they have plans to hire an employee in the future.   Hiner sees Highland Roots Market bringing benefits to Highland County.

“I think it’s really good for tourism, which brings money to the county,” says Hiner.  “I think that for a lot of people, it’s hard to get fresh food and they have to drive over an hour to go to a grocery store.  So, this makes it more available and easy for people to get healthy food.”

You can get more information about Highland Roots Market from its Facebook page or call 540-468-2625.