Bread of Life Market opens in Charles City

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Charles City residents now have another option for their groceries at Bread of Life Market.

Located at 809 Wisconsin St., the store opened Dec. 1.

Shelly Tilton and her husband moved to Charles City about a year ago and wanted to be more involved in the faith-based community, she said.

“By accident I found out about bent/dent groceries, otherwise classified as salvage groceries,” Tilton said. “Amish and Mennonites have been doing this for a long time.”

Tilton is looking to work with local churches to partner with them to give a tithing back to the community, so Bread of Life can offer a voucher program to residents.

Tilton also is a nurse in Mason City in critical care, she said.

“As this business goes forward I am pretty much guaranteed for another full year I’ll be working full-time,” as a nurse, Tilton said. “I’m not drawing any type of a salary off of this business.”

Tilton doesn’t want to stop being nurse, but does want to start working on Bread of Life full-time in the near future, while working as a part time nurse.

“I love my nursing. It’s just I think that God has pulled me toward this direction,” Tilton said. “We have been so blessed in the last few days. The people in the community have been very positive and absolutely amazed by the pricing.”

“We will be accepting EBT cards,” Tilton said. “We have all of our paperwork, we’re just waiting for them to give us the go ahead.”

Bread of Life will have its biggest impact on people in a gray financial area, where they make enough to not get a lot of assistance, but they still have difficulty making ends meet, Tilton said.

“This is a way for them to get their dollar to stretch further,” Tilton said.

Hours will be 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Monday to Friday and 10 a.m.  to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Closed Sundays/Holidays so their employees can worship and have family
time.

Bread of Life has received its first shipment of low cost food and has marked it down 30 percent to 50 percent off retail.

“Every single shipment is going to be something different and new,” Tilton said. “We’re going to reach out to different vendors in different parts of the country.”

Their first shipment came from Texas and included a lot of flavors from the South, Tilton said.

The greatly discounted foods is not limited to near or past its sale by shelf date, dented or damaged packaging, items in seasonal or otherwise-dated packaging, store
closeouts, manufacturer overstock or salvage from truck wrecks.

“We have gluten free, organic, K-cups, snacks, cereal, Gatorade, water and so much more,” said Tilton in a press release.

Bread of Life accepts cash, debit and credit cards and will accept EBT for food assistance programs once approved. It will not accept checks.

They have free Bibles for anyone who needs one, and they also encourage people to bring any items to their resale area to resell.

Being able to resell donated items will help keep food prices down, Tilton said. Hopefully revenue from the resale shop will be able to help cover overhead costs.

She urged people to bring household items, bedding, furniture, home decor, clothing and other items to the resale shop.