Raintree Market’s second south Louisiana location opened in the town of Jeanerette on Nov. 19, 2025 – filling a grocery void that had left the town’s residents without a full-service supermarket for more than three years. 
The store, a tribal enterprise of the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, is located at 1001 East Main St. The town’s former supermarket, Mac’s Grocery Store, was destroyed by fire in June 2022. The former owner opted not to rebuild the store, prompting the tribe, which already operated a store seven miles away in Baldwin, to step in.
“We could not leave our neighbors in a bind. Many people who do not have cars used to walk to Mac’s,” said Tribal Chairman Melissa Darden, who led efforts to acquire the site.
“It was the anchor of the community due to its location and what it provided. We have a very successful model with our very own Raintree Market. It was a no-brainer; we could fill a need for our neighbors and expand an already successful business model.”
In the same press release, Countice LeBlanc, general manager of Raintree Market, added, “When it was destroyed by fire, the community lost essential access. We knew we needed to act.”
Plans subject to change
The tribe purchased the store and planned to have it opened back up by spring 2024, but the fire damage proved to be more extensive than first thought.
In an interview with The Shelby Report in June, LeBlanc said two of the store’s major beams ended up needing to be replaced, so they opted to take the structure down to the ground and start fresh. That clean slate allowed her to design the Jeanerette store to resemble its sister location.
The Chitimacha had hired her in 2008 to design and project-manage the store in Baldwin, which was about 16,000 square feet and opened in 2011. LeBlanc, an area native, had been a store owner prior to that. She operated a 4,000-square-foot Breaux’s Foodland store in Baldwin starting in 1982.
“In designing the Baldwin store, anything that I always wanted – ‘boy, it would sure be nice to have this,’ or ‘it would be nice to have that’ or ‘it would be nice to have this right here’ – I got to do that,” she said.
“There’s not one thing that I could say in designing that store that I would say I wish I would have done this [differently]. I’m a detail-oriented person, so I spent so much time on detail. Same with the second store; it’s actually a small replica of the first.”
The Jeanerette location is about 10,000 square feet.
“A lot of people say they walk [in] and it’s like, ‘Oh gosh, this is like walking into the other one, with the same color scheme and everything.’ I wanted the customers to feel comfortable when they walked in,” said LeBlanc, who is general manager of both stores.
A push to open
Because they ended up rebuilding the store in Jeanerette, the spring 2024 opening timeline was stretched to early 2026. But LeBlanc didn’t think that was soon enough.
She pushed for the November 2025 opening so that residents would have access to the items they needed for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
After Mac’s burned, area residents without transportation were having to shop places like dollar stores for food, so their access to fresh produce, meat and other perishables was limited.
“I wanted them to be able to have that luxury [of a full grocery shop] for the holidays,” she said. “They were grateful.”
LeBlanc said Jeanerette residents have continued to strongly support the store, and shoppers from other nearby towns like Lydia and Loreauville are also visiting, drawn by Raintree Market’s specialty meats and other signature items, “not a can of green beans,” she joked.
All about the food
Raintree Markets do carry canned green beans and the other grocery staples, but what sets them apart are offerings such as specialty meats, prepared foods and bakery items. 
“We have a big specialty meat department down here; it’s a big thing, you know,” LeBlanc said. “Our homemade sausages, stuffed chicken breasts, stuffed chicken thighs, stuffed pork chops … in both stores we do a lot of that.”
In the deli, prepared food options like crawfish fettuccine, pork jambalaya and crawfish jambalaya are “staples here,” she said.
In the bakery, the hottest sellers include Mississippi Mud Pie and Banana Split Pie.
LeBlanc has a good handle on the foodservice side of the business, having run a catering business out of her Breaux’s store for about 15 years.
The Baldwin area had about 5,000 residents, and people depended on her to cater parties and other events. When she left the store to join Raintree Market, she still had people calling her wanting her to do catering for them. Instead, she wrote a cookbook so they could make the dishes for themselves.
While Raintree Markets do cater events at times, their main focus is producing the dishes for the stores’ everyday customers.
Team support
Some team members LeBlanc had as owner of Breaux’s followed her to Raintree Market, yielding relationships that have now lasted 30 years.
When the Jeanerette store opened, a meat department worker from the Baldwin store went over to the new store to become assistant manager. One who had worked in the deli at Breaux’s and then the Raintree Market in Baldwin moved to the Jeanerette store to become the deli manager.
Those kinds of promotions bring peace of mind, LeBlanc said.
“They know how I operate; they know what I expect,” she said. “We’ve worked together for so many years that that really took a load off of me, that they were able to go to the Jeanerette store and just pick up their departments and just run with them.”
Wholesale support
Another relationship that has carried over from her earlier career is the one with Associated Grocers of Baton Rouge. She joined the co-op in the late 1980s, as best she can recall.
“I’ve been with them for a long time. They’re a partner to me; they’re like a second family to me,” she said. “I can pick up the phone at any given time and there’s somebody that I can call there and say, ‘Hey, I need help’ and the team is there. Immediately they react, and I just don’t feel like you would get that at just any other place.”
Balancing technology
LeBlanc said she keeps a close eye on technology but is selective about what works for Raintree Market’s customer base. An online shopping pilot did not gain traction, which she attributed to the rural, relationship-oriented nature of her shoppers, many of whom are elderly.
But she is evaluating electronic shelf tags as the next potential upgrade.
“You have to keep up with technology; you just have to realize what the boundaries are for your area,” she said. “You don’t want to scare them off with too much technology.”
LeBlanc, who now has about 44 years of experience in the industry, has no plans to ride off into the sunset anytime soon.
“I’m still having fun,” she said. “I’m 65, and people say, when will you retire? Oh, I have at least 20 years ahead when you love what you’re doing.”