“With deep regret and broken hearts,” grocers Chet and Peggy Knights announced on social media Wednesday that they are closing Fresh Approach, their longtime West End store.

The Knights have run the classic neighborhood market, located on Brackett Street opposite Reiche Elementary School, for 34 years.

“I’m very sad to hear the news,” said Reiche teacher Kevin Brewster, who was waiting at the lunch counter for his meatball sandwich at noon Wednesday. “It’s a neighborhood institution.”

The store feels deeply personal, adorned with an idiosyncratic collection of, among many other items, vintage Schlitz beer memorabilia, faded Beatles posters, a disco ball, Denver Broncos pennants, and a Pillsbury Doughboys ― Poppie Fresh trio grinning by the cash register.

Fresh Approach, and especially the lunch counter, was humming Wednesday. Chet Knights seemed to know each one of his customers personally and while he politely declined to talk with a reporter, he talked quietly with most of them.

The store lost its license to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in February 2025, after an undercover compliance agent was able to purchase ineligible nonfood items. Their Facebook post acknowledged the wrongdoing, and noted that after 11 months, the Knights were able to renew the license.

But that long stretch without “a very big part of our business” took its toll. A neighborhood-sponsored GoFundMe campaign helped the beloved store survive the immediate crisis, but even at the time, the Knights said they were unsure it would be enough to save the store.

Beyond that, restaurant closings hurt their wholesale business, they posted, and “With the current economy and cost of doing business is more than we can overcome.”

Brewster has shopped at Fresh Approach since 2004, usually for lunch, occasionally for groceries or to buy treats — popsicles or popcorn — for his classroom. He chatted with Amina Maalin, who lives in the neighborhood and was picking up a bagel with cream cheese.

“The store has been around since I was a little kid,” she said. As a Reiche student, she’d often stop by for ice cream.

Gorham resident Kevin Eaton, another longtime fan, had taken his lunch break from a nearby construction job to grab a burger.

“There’s not many of these left, not like it used to be,” Eaton said, “the mom-and-pop neighborhood market, not a corporate entity like most of these places around.”

The Knights said they plan to liquidate their inventory, starting immediately. For now, cases were still full of meat, slices of cake, and tubs of macaroni salad, sauerkraut and Nashville Hot Chicken Sauce alongside typical neighborhood market stock, such as beer, butter, Coffee-Mate, onions and eggs.

Fresh Approach will stay open until all items are sold. On Wednesday, Chet Knights declined to say when he thought that might be. The Knights do not own the building, though Chet Knights managed to joke that given all he’d paid in rent over the years, he’d bought it three times over.

“We have made so many friends and have watched children grow up to adults,” the Knights wrote on their Facebook post. ” Each and every one of you are special to us and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

Customers like Corey McDonald, who works at a nearby property management company, returned the sentiment. Munching a peanut-butter cracker and waiting on a burger, he said he’ll miss Fresh Approach. “It’s hard to find places like this that are so personable,” he said.