Shop’n Kart Fuller's Market Place in Centralia will soon be under new ownership.
“After over 45 years in Lewis County, we wanted to say at this time we are in the final steps of a change of ownership for Fuller’s Market in Centralia,” the business wrote in a statement Thursday, Sept. 19. “We have so loved being able to serve Lewis County for so many decades, and we will still be a part of the community as we live here. We want to thank all our employees, customers and community. We wish that we could continue, but due to many circumstances, we had to make this hard decision.”
The statement went on to say the new owners are already part of Centralia’s business community and Fuller’s will remain open as a grocery store.
While the sale has yet to be finalized, it will be closed by the end of the month, said Shop’n Kart owner Darris McDaniel, who spoke to The Chronicle on Thursday.
“On the 29th, we’ll be closing the store for a few hours to do inventory and officially hand it over,” McDaniel said.
As for why he decided to sell, he cited his age as the main factor.
“Basically I’m 81, pushing 82, and I had an interested buyer, so I wasn’t going to pass that up,” McDaniel said.
A career businessman, McDaniel opened his first business in California in 1968.
He said he went on to open a total of 33 different businesses. He thanked his customers in Lewis County for their loyalty throughout the decades Fuller’s has been open.
The buyer’s name is Harnek Dhudwal, McDaniel said. The Chronicle is planning to meet with Dhudwal next week to discuss his plans for the business.
In 2021, Dhudwal was featured in an article in The Chronicle after taking ownership of Pearl Street Grocery and Deli and Shell gas station, located at 2312 N. Pearl St. in Centralia. Together with his business partners, he owns at least 15 businesses throughout Lewis County.
Though Fuller’s Market Place will no longer be owned by McDaniel, the other two Shop’n Kart locations in Westport and Seaview will remain open, the business stated.
Fuller’s Market Place is located at 505 S. Tower Ave. in Centralia.
McDaniel took ownership of the business in 2011.
Fuller’s Market Place is the last remaining outlet of a once-thriving local family-owned supermarket chain. There were once three Fuller’s stores in the Twin Cities. The company announced the closure of its flagship store in Chehalis, which had been started by Bill and Ed Fuller in 1941, in 2006. Its other location, on Fords Prairie, closed in 2004.
The company also owned a Mega Foods store in Tumwater, but closed in 2010
The late Rob Fuller and his daughter, Liz, gave $100,000 to build Centralia’s skate and BMX park in 2002. Economic challenges later pushed the Fullers to sell their stores.
Yard Birds
This isn’t the first property sale McDaniel has completed this year. In July, he closed a sale on the now-vacant Yard Birds Shopping Mall property at 2100 N. National Ave. in Chehalis for $2.4 million.
It was sold to PISTON LLC, owned in partnership by Douglas LeMay and the Seattle-based law firm Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson.
McDaniel had initially opened up a new Shop’n Kart location inside Yard Birds in 1990, before buying the entire mall in 1998 with the intention “to turn it into the Yard Birds of old,” as previously reported by The Chronicle.
That intention would be hard to realize as the rise of online shopping over the next decade saw the death of many big box retailers along with retail shopping malls like Yard Birds — a problem that was exacerbated in 2008 with the recession.
In 2017, the Shop’n Kart location inside the mall was closed.
