When wildfires threatened Watt’s Ranch Market in Meeker, Colorado, this summer, two executives from the company that owns the store – Aspen-based Clark’s Market – stepped in to keep it operating while team members went home to prepare for possible evacuation.
Clark’s COO Jim Clapp first arrived on the scene, later joined by Director of Marketing Samantha Johnston, who had been at another store 14 hours away. The store was a vital resource for the firefighters who were battling the blaze and needed hydration and sustenance, as well as the people in the community who were stocking up on essentials to prepare for evacuation.
In a LinkedIn post, Johnston said, “When a wildfire put the Meeker community on pre-evacuation orders and many of our employees needed to leave their homes, Jim showed up. There was never a question. He kept the grocery store open. He served firefighters and first responders. And he ran the store (sometimes solo) so his team could do what they needed to do for their families.”
The Elk Fire, southeast of Meeker, was an offshoot of the larger Lee Fire, which was started by lightning Aug. 2. In a little more than two weeks, the Elk Fire was 100 percent contained, having burned more than 14,500 acres. The Lee Fire, which was 99 percent contained at press time, was estimated to have burned more than 137,000 acres.
Tom Clark, president and CEO of Clark’s, said the threat to the town of Meeker, and the Watt’s Ranch Market store that Clark’s bought last August, was serious.
The blaze “was really close, and the prevailing winds pointed the fire towards the town,” he said.
Meeker got a level two alert, which meant residents needed to have their bags packed in preparation for evacuation should it move to a level three, which means evacuate immediately.
“All of our employees live in the town, so they had to go home and pack and get everything important out of their homes, get what they could and move them to a safer place,” Clark said.
Since Clapp didn’t live in Meeker, he was available to help, as was Johnston.
“That level three can happen at any time, and you’re gone … and yet the people that are packing need food, the firefighters need food, Gatorade, soda, water, all the things,” Clark said. “So it’s a really critical thing to have [the store] open. Having people that can and are willing to be there, that was the special sauce here.”
Johnston added that many area restaurants were shut down, as were discount variety stores that operated on either side of the grocery store.
“Clark’s Watt’s Ranch Market was, really, for a period of time, the only place to get food in the community,” she said, noting that some 1,500 firefighters battled the blazes.
The grocer’s wholesale partner, Associated Food Stores, responded to Clark’s needs quickly, getting a pallet of water to the Meeker store within a day’s time, for example.
“They’re a fantastic partner,” said Clark, who serves on the AFS board of directors. “They have a can-do attitude, and they’ve been a very key part of our success, that’s for sure.”
Meeker never got to level three, and all of Clark’s staff members in Meeker have been able to return to work, but the wildfires’ impacts are still being felt.
“The town is quiet; all the normal visitors haven’t really returned,” Clark said. “Now is when all the little businesses in the town need them to [return]. This is usually a great time of year there.”
Concentrated in Colorado
Clark’s has eight stores in Colorado, plus two in Blanding, Utah, and one in Sedona, Arizona. In addition to Meeker, the Colorado stores are located in the company’s hometown of Aspen, Crested Butte, Denver, Norwood, Parachute, Snowmass Village and Telluride.
The company was founded 47 years ago by Clark’s dad, Tom Clark Sr., who worked at Safeway while in college. Tom Sr. worked with his own father at Rocky Mountain Marketing Services after that, helping market national brands.
But he preferred retail and had developed a fondness for Aspen after honeymooning there, so when he later had the opportunity to open a store in a new shopping center in Aspen, he took the leap and moved his family.
The first Clark’s Market debuted in 1978.
Tom Jr. joined the company in 1998 and was named president in 2007. Tom Sr. retired in 2020 after more than 40 years at the helm, and Tom Jr. added CEO duties.
The Denver location, Clark’s first urban store and built from the ground up, opened in August 2023 in the historic Lowry neighborhood.
Also in 2023, Clark’s finished a long-planned renovation of its Crested Butte store. It marked the completion of a 20-year project to remodel all the Clark’s Markets in resort areas.
The Watt’s Ranch Market in Meeker came under Clark’s ownership in August 2024. The store had been owned by the Watt family for about 30 years.
The family was looking for a buyer that would take care of the store and “build on what they had created over the decades,” Clark said. “It was really an honor that they chose us to continue that on. And we’ve enjoyed being there.”
An expansion/remodel of the Meeker store will take place in coming years, he added.
Fresh forward
Stores in resort areas operate under the Clark’s Market name while those in more rural and farming-type communities are referred to as Clark’s Ranch Markets. Regardless of format, Clark’s stores average about 20,000 square feet.
The Clark’s Markets feature “more organic, natural type products, a lot of expanded deli offerings and chef prepared meals, things like that, where the Ranch Markets are more your meat and potatoes-type stores,” Clark said.
The Denver store, being in an urban setting, has an extensive cheese department with its own cheesemonger.
“Dorothy does an amazing job with the product offering and sampling for our customers,” he said.
An adjacent liquor store offers shoppers a full complement of wines and spirits.
The Denver store also features a chicken salad that a Google reviewer says “must have a cult following.” The chicken salad is in the process of being rolled out to all the Clark’s stores, Johnston said.
She added that some of Clark’s other signature items include house-made fresh guacamole, signature branded soups, grab-and-go/prepared meals, fresh-cut fruit and produce, fresh-squeezed juices – “things that you would expect from a really fresh-forward market.”
Team focused
One of the lessons the second-generation leader of Clark’s has taken to heart is that “the better we take care of our people, the better they’ll take care of our customers.
“So we revolve all of our decisions around that ethos,” Tom Jr. said.
Clark’s has team members who have spent their entire careers with the company as well as high schoolers and college students.
“We love high schoolers,” Clark said. “That was the track I took, working all through high school and loved it. I think a grocery store is a great place to learn customer service and social skills and retailing and merchandising.”
The company also fortifies its workforce in a couple of more non-traditional ways. An autism group in Aspen provides workers that typically perform front-end duties like bagging and taking groceries to customers’ cars, and college students from all over the world with J-1 visas work at Clark’s resort stores during the summer.
“The J-1 visas definitely help us keep the stores running smoothly,” he said.
Johnston added, “One of the taglines we have is that ‘it’s more than a grocery store, it’s an experience,’ and that really speaks to the people part of what we do. You know, you can buy a tomato at any grocery store in the United States, but we want you to buy the tomato from Clark’s Market because your experience is exceptional.
“And that really starts with being greeted when you walk in the door and team members who stop what they’re doing and take you to the product. We don’t get it right 100 percent of the time, but I think we get it right enough of the time and consistently enough that people will make a choice to come to Clark’s even when they have a national grocer down the road.”
Bolstering its communities
Clark’s Markets supports a wide range of organizations in the areas where its stores operate, Johnston said.
“From a local perspective, we do a lot of things to support youth organizations, Rotary Clubs, civic clubs, everything under the sun … that we get asked to do.”
There are also more structured giving programs, such as Nonprofit Mondays, where a portion of daily sales are donated to a nonprofit, as well as Clark’s Cares, an eight-week drive each year that benefits local organizations.
“I think a fun and unique part of that is that ‘local’ means local to each community, and that’s really driven at the store level. It’s not Tom telling people where they’re going to donate their money; it’s the stores working with their employees to determine what nonprofits mean a lot to them,” Johnston said.
“That’s one of the beauties of being big enough to have some consistent things across our stores, but small enough that stores have the autonomy to take care of their own communities as they see the need.”
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