Liz Havens remembers being 5 years old and standing on a milk crate to check out customers at her family's produce business in Springfield.
Now, more than four decades later, some of those same customers are regulars at Country Market, the family-owned grocery store Havens and her brother own and operate on Wabash Avenue. The continuity of the relationship between Havens' family and their customers is part of what sets family businesses apart, in Havens' estimation.
"It feels like a community here," she said. "We are on a first-name basis with at least 60% of our customers."
The family business legacy goes back three generations for Havens. Her grandfather, Henry Dawson, ran a family-owned and operated wholesale produce company in Springfield. In 1967, his son and Havens' father, the late George Dawson, opened Country Market.
Country Market built its current 5,000-square-foot location at 1610 Wabash Ave. in 2009. That's also when Havens and her brother, Greg Dawson, joined the business full time, later becoming part owners. When their father passed away in 2023, they took on full ownership.
Havens now manages the day-to-day operations and ordering, while Dawson is the head butcher and meat manager.
Supporting other family-owned, local businesses is a key part of Country Market's identity. The mantra, "Buy local. We do," is posted at the top of the store's web page and can be found on signage throughout the store.
Havens and her brother practice what they preach, stocking Country Market's shelves with products from more than 150 Illinois producers, including many local and family-owned businesses. The store carries produce from Suttill's Gardens, a Springfield-based family business, sauces and dressings from the Track Shack in Springfield and seafood from family-owned Dixon Fisheries in East Peoria, just to name a few examples. Havens buys honey from "a gentleman in New Berlin" and barbecue sauce from a "guy in Chatham that has one of the best sauces around."
Every Friday, Country Market staff travels to Arthur to buy produce at the market and baked goods from Homestead Bakery. The store sources much of its meat from Central Illinois Poultry Processing, also in Arthur.
"We try to locally source as many things as possible," Havens said. "If you want spaghetti sauce, I don't have Ragu or Prego, but I have sauces from Jacksonville and from the Track Shack and from The Hill (in St. Louis)."
The connections among these family businesses often reaches back generations. Jacque Suttill, the third generation to run Suttill's Garden, remembers her father selling produce to Havens' dad for Country Market when she and Liz were just children. Suttill's Garden, a produce farm located on Groth Street, has been family-owned and operated since 1904.
"We go back, Liz and I and our fathers," Suttill said. "I think it's great to do business with all these local people. I'm a big advocate for buy fresh, buy local."
Another local, family business that Havens recently started working with is Jacksonsville-based Bland Family Farm. Clint Bland and his wife, Marcella, bought 38 acres in 2016 to start the family farm, adding another 91 acres a few years later. More recently, the Blands launched The Farms (Farmers Alliance for Regional Marketing and Sales) of Illinois, a food distribution company to help local farmers and producers get their products to market.
Farms of Illinois currently sources products from about 15 Illinois farms, and Clint Bland said they hope to grow that to around 30. The Blands recently invested in a distribution facility in Jacksonville which they are refurbishing for food distribution.
The farms of Illinois' clients range from larger chain grocery stores to family-owned business such as Country Market to chefs at local restaurants who want to source local menu items. He said he loves working with local, family-owned businesses because more of the money spent stays in the local community.
According to a June 2025 study from Capital One Shopping Research, 68%, or $68 of every $100, spent at local stores remains in the local economy. American shoppers spent about $3.7 trillion at local stores in 2024, according to the report.
"The money pool is still floating in the community; it's not going somewhere else," Bland said. "It's that connection to the community that is so important."
Havens said filling Country Market's shelves with products from so many local suppliers is much more time-consuming than purchasing from one or two large grocery companies, but she's motivated to support local producers and stock her store with high quality products.
"It's a lot of hard work, but that's just how my dad was, and that's how I am," she said. "We try to buy the best quality products so people want to come here. Nobody really has to shop here. They have to want to shop here."
