Markets and grocers: the negative, the chain's stores, and the Sunday market

1911 — present · McKinley Avenue to Ironworks Plaza

The municipal market that is not there: South Bend's food record holds a municipal curb market documented to its ordinance numbers, 1911 to 1924. Mishawaka's holds none. No ordinance, market house, or market master for this city appears in the sources reached for this section — not in the city-commissioned history, not in the 1868 directory, whose food trade is mills, a hotel, and two meat markets — and the negative is printed at full size rather than passed over: a factory city of Mishawaka's size may have run a market the surviving record does not show, and the settling sources are named in this section's note (the council minutes, the Enterprise run, the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library's local history). What the city has in the market line is modern, and it closes this entry.

The directory's Mishawaka, 1921: What the directory record does hold is a classified snapshot seven years before West End opened. In Polk's 1921 Mishawaka classified list, the brewery that anchors this city's food story appears under a Prohibition heading — "Soft Drink Manufacturers: Kamm & Schellinger Co, N Center" — the 1853 brewery's listed trade in the dry years, its beer years behind it and its mansion's restaurant years ahead. Under Teas, Coffees and Spices the same list carries the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. at two addresses, 511 North Main and 114 Lincoln Way East: the chain grocer was on Mishawaka's main streets a generation before the supermarkets this entry closes with. The full classified roster of the city's bakers, grocers, meat markets, and restaurants in 1921 was not extracted to leg standard; it stands named in this section's note, with the volume itself as its settling source.

Martin's in Mishawaka, at store size: The grocery chain of the two cities is South Bend's — founded on Portage Avenue in 1947, told whole in that city's food record — and only its Mishawaka stores belong here. The documented course runs through McKinley Avenue: the store at 424 West McKinley was one of the stores the chain had acquired as Thrifty Marts in the 1980s, and Martin's closed it on October 1, 2006, the same week its new store opened at Heritage Square on Gumwood Road, at 7355 Heritage Square Drive — the supermarket following the shoppers north, twenty-six years after the mall did, in the Malls record's phrase. The Heritage Square store still trades, and was being refreshed in June 2026. The chain's own locator carries two further Mishawaka addresses — 306 North Bittersweet Road, and 314 North Ironwood Drive printed under a Mishawaka address though the street is the two cities' seam — and they are printed as the locator gives them. The corridor's other anchors are pointers: Meijer's first Indiana store opened on Grape Road in 1994, on the company's own statement, and Town & Country's roster carries a Kroger; both stand in Malls.

The Sunday market: The city's own market is the Mishawaka Market, a Sunday farmers market run by the Parks and Recreation Department at Ironworks Plaza, 230 Ironworks Avenue — 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sundays from May into September, on the riverfront ground the factories vacated. The city's vendor forms count the seasons: the 2021 form calls that year the market's third, the 2023 form its fifth — a first season of 2019, by the city's own arithmetic. Its mission, in the form's words, is "to provide our community with a consistent, high-quality, well-stocked market." Farm stands of the river flats, the older market form, left no documented house in the record reached; the gap stands in this section's note.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune (October 2006), via the Malls record — Martin's closed its 424 West McKinley Avenue store on 1 October 2006, the week the Heritage Square store opened; the McKinley stores acquired as Thrifty Marts in the 1980s.
2. Malls section of this history — the Heritage Square store at 7355 Heritage Square Drive, trading and refreshed in June 2026; Meijer's first Indiana store on Grape Road, 1994; the Kroger in Town & Country's roster.
3. Martin's Super Markets, chain store locator (2026) — 306 North Bittersweet Road; 314 North Ironwood Drive under a Mishawaka address.
4. City of Mishawaka, Parks and Recreation Department, Mishawaka Market vendor information (2021; 2023) — the Sunday market at 230 Ironworks Avenue, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., May to September; 2021 as year three and 2023 as year five; the mission line.
5. R. L. Polk & Co.'s South Bend city directory, 1921, Mishawaka classified list — Kamm & Schellinger Co. under Soft Drink Manufacturers, N Center; the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. under Teas, Coffees and Spices, 511 N Main and 114 Lincoln Way E.
6. Visit South Bend Mishawaka, farmers market guide (2026) — the Mishawaka Market at Ironworks Plaza, Sundays, May 21 to September 24 in its season listing.