After 39 years, North End grocery store owners are finally taking a break

Paul Kamp insists he's going to do something else in retirement. Maybe learn how to fish. Head to the cabin, pop open a beer with friends. Anything but think about the North End grocery store he's owned for 39 years, the one that stayed open every day — through holidays and snowstorms, sickness and health.

"Here's our plan of action," Kamp said Thursday. "'Where are you going?'

'I dunno.'

'When are you coming back?'

'I dunno.'"

Sure. But you'll have to forgive Kamp's Food Market's hundreds of loyal customers if they don't buy it.

Kamp and his wife, Lisa, took over the family store as newlyweds, when they were 23 and 22, more than a decade after Paul's dad was diagnosed with brain cancer. At the time he took over the store, Kamp said, he figured he'd "give it a try."

"You knew that if you forgot something on Christmas or Christmas Eve, you knew that you could stop there," said Gidget Korich, who met the Kamps when their kids were at St. Bernard's Elementary School together. "I hope he learns to relax. I'm not sure he will."

Kamp said he has loved every day of it. And those hundreds of customers have loved his family right back, sharing their praise, sadness and more than a little disbelief on social media after Kamp announced the sale earlier this week. There are people who insist they wouldn't buy their oxtails, beef sticks or chicken wings anyplace else.

Selling groceries is the family's legacy: For more than 136 years, Kamp said, a member of his family has sold groceries in St. Paul. But while two of his three sons intend to keep working at the store, he said, none want to take over. They made the decision to sell a while ago. This week, it happened.

"People are upset," Kamp admitted.

Why get out now?

One reason Kamp's Food Market is so beloved, said longtime customer John Brodrick, is "that Paul is just a terrific guy."

Another is something that used to be common at family-run, corner grocery stores: In addition to selling meat and vegetables and penny candy, stores were entwined with their communities. Kamp's has donated food to charitable causes and meat raffles and helped organize fundraisers. Kamp coached youth sports at the neighborhood recreation center.

None of that is lost on his customers, said Brodrick, who taught Kamp at the old Washington High School.

"That's St. Paul," Brodrick said. "And we want to maintain that as long as we can."

As a kid, Bruce Smith used to run down to Kamp's with his mom's grocery list. The grocer would fill the bags and put the total on the family's tab. As a 14-year-old, Smith talked Kamp into giving him a job in the meat department. Thirty-five years later, Smith is category manager for meat and seafood for Lunds and Byerlys.

"The man is a pillar of the community," Smith said, adding that they still meet for dinner.

The Kamps have sold the store to Kwah Lay and his wife Amina, who plan to change the name to Lay's.

Not much will change, Kwah Lay promised. A bigger produce section is planned to meet the demand of the area's growing Karen community, but the store's popular meat market will stay: Lay has promised jobs to current employees.

Kamp has a contract to stick around for 30 days. After that? He insists he and Lisa are heading north, without a care in the world.

But as he walked out of the store Thursday, Kamp stopped to watch the soft drink guy open the vending machine outside the front door. The coils were caked in ice.