When I worked for Ball’s home canning division, we always told customers to ask their neighborhood grocer to order any of our products they couldn’t find. Fruit Fresh? Talk to the manager. It was advice from another era- could you walk into a Kroger and ask for something special today? Maybe, but first you’d have to find someone to ask. At Harvest Supermarkets, though, you can! March right in and talk to a real person who knows the store, recognizes its customers, and sometimes even knows your name. That’s one of the reasons Harvest has become my favorite grocery store. It’s a true neighborhood throwback.
Harvest Market traces its roots to 1976, when twenty-eight-year-old Larry Vores purchased a grocery in Elwood, Indiana. Vores learned the business under Edmund Szcesny at Anderson’s Cross Street Market and, in a fitting twist, once lived in the very house where that market later stood1. By 1978, Vores had expanded his operation to locations in Elwood, New Castle, and Middletown2. Each featured a full-service meat counter- a hallmark that would eventually become one of Harvest’s defining traits.
Vores’ company continued to grow over the following decades, eventually numbering ten stores around East-Central Indiana3. These days, eight remain in Anderson, Alexandria, Chesterfield, Elwood, Frankton, Greensburg, Middletown, and New Castle. By 2013, the family-owned chain employed around 300 people4. That same year, leadership passed to Larry’s daughter, Allison Vores, who relocated the company’s headquarters to downtown Anderson5.
Larry Vores, a Vietnam veteran who earned two Bronze Service Stars, died in 2022 at the age of seventy-four6. His legacy, however, lives on: although beloved Indiana names like Marsh, Wise, Eavey’s, Ross, and Pay Less have either disappeared or been absorbed into national chains, Harvest remains one of the last true hometown supermarket companies around East Central Indiana. Local grocers haven’t disappeared entirely, and I’m glad.
Just next door to Juan’s, Harvest’s Chesterfield supermarket is my favorite place to shop. The Chesterfield Shopping Center where it sits opened in 1955 with Carpenter’s 5 Cent to $1 store -a self-serve variety emporium- as its anchor. With parking for 150 cars, the plaza was also home to Anderson Banking Company and Pic-N-Pay Supermarket. Pic-N-Pay featured a forty-five-foot frozen food section, fifty-five feet of meats, thirty-three feet of fresh produce, and a twenty-five-foot dairy aisle7. Harvest has since taken over the space.
Sizewise, Chesterfield’s Harvest Supermarket occupies that sweet spot between a dollar store and a typical Kroger. When I first walked in about a decade ago, the first thing that caught my eye wasn’t the produce or the meat counter- it was the collection of local business cards pinned beneath the store’s lottery display. It still exists today: on a recent visit, a dog groomer, a funeral home, a lawn care company, and a home inspector were all advertised! The community bulletin board is such a small thing, but it tells you everything you need to know about Harvest Market: it’s more than a grocery store. Harvest is an honest-to-goodness neighborhood gathering place.
That same hometown feeling continues throughout the building. Spend five minutes inside, and you’ll understand why locals are loyal. Chesterfield’s Harvest has just six aisles, or seven if you count the wide produce section. That may not sound like much in an era of warehouse supercenters, but it’s more than enough for the town it serves and the travelers passing through, as I did. Harvest is no longer on my commute, but I find myself making the trip once or twice a week anyway. The store is simple and unpretentious, but its rustic aisle signs provide just enough charm to remind you that it isn’t something from a cookie cutter.
I’m a little ashamed to admit that the aisle I’ve logged the most miles in is frozen foods. It won’t win any design awards, but this is where I first discovered Vito & Nick’s II frozen pizzas, which are loaded with toppings and said to be made from scratch. A little farther down, I stumbled across Corner Booth pizzas, which somehow managed to top Vito & Nick’s with thick-cut mozzarella and enormous amounts of toppings piled onto a cracker-thin crust. Harvest was also the first place I found the Yellowstone frozen dinners. When they first popped up, the manager explained that their selection had already changed to match what local customers actually bought. Try getting that kind of answer from your local Kroger variant!
Along the back wall of Chesterfield’s Harvest is a long line of dairy cases. Dairy isn’t my preferred department, but Harvest still won me over with Dutch Farms cheeses. The company’s pepper jack has become a staple in my fridge, and I’d happily put it up against Sargento. I only eat it sparingly since I’ve developed some gastric reflux, but Harvest is the only place I know that stocks the Daisy cottage cheese that plays nicely with my innards.
I mentioned this already, but if Harvest Supermarkets has a signature feature, it’s its meat department. Larry Vores insisted that every store have a real butcher shop, and that commitment still pays dividends decades later. The chain’s meats have won awards, but more importantly, they live up to the hype. I’ve taken home steaks, pork chops, and ground beef from Harvest that were both fantastic and outstanding! The meat is cut locally, the prices are fair, and the quality consistently outshines what I’ve found at the big chains. It’s one of the biggest reasons I keep making the drive to Chesterfield.
Harvest’s produce section -a wide aisle seven– is small. Still, it meets the community’s need, and I’ve learned that bigger doesn’t mean better. Back when I worked for Ball, I headed here to buy fruits and vegetables to supply photo shoots for products like the Ball® FreshTECH™ Automatic Home Canning System. Part of my job occasionally meant editing photos to remove bruises, blemishes, and oddly shaped stems from produce before it appeared in marketing materials. Harvest’s produce consistently needed very little of that, if any, but veggies I bought from Marsh were always labor-intensive in post.
If Harvest Supermarket’s award-winning meat department isn’t enough to send you racing to the nearest store, Chester Fried Chicken just might seal the deal. Founded in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1965, I’ve had a soft spot for it ever since my stepdad managed a Chester’s in Daleville as a second job when he was operations manager at a Muncie forge. Even today, every strip is good, but two out of three are outstanding. The chicken is juicy and flavorful, while the breading strikes a perfect balance.
Chester’s counter takes up only about a sixth of Harvest Supermarket’s deli, leaving plenty of space for all the other fresh foods and familiar favorites that make a neighborhood place like Harvest worth visiting. The prices are scrawled on a whiteboard instead of printed on fancy digital displays, and it’s on brand. Behind the counter, I’ve found every meat I’ve ever craved, along with my favorite red-skin potato salad, creamy coleslaw, macaroni salad, and any other midwest deli staple I could want.
The more time I spend at Harvest, the more I realize its greatest strength isn’t the meat counter or the produce. It’s that the store still behaves like an independent grocer. Managers adjust inventory based on what local customers actually buy. Employees answer questions instead of pointing toward an app. Community business cards still hang by the entrance. It’s a supermarket rooted in its town rather than dropped into it by some careless corporate real estate department.
Stores like Harvest remind me that buying groceries doesn’t have to feel anonymous. You don’t need endless aisles or six self-checkout lanes to build customer loyalty. Sometimes all it takes is a butcher who knows his craft, produce that’s actually fresh, employees who answer questions, and managers who stock what their neighbors want instead of whatever some distant corporate office dictates. That’s why I keep driving twenty minutes to Chesterfield once or twice a week when plenty of other groceries sit closer to home. Here’s to Harvest Market!
Disclosure: I received no compensation, discounts, free products, or other incentives from Harvest Supermarkets for writing this post. This article is not sponsored or affiliated with the company in any way. The opinions expressed are entirely my own- I simply believe in recognizing local businesses that deserve a little praise!
Sources Cited
1 About Us (n.d.) Harvest Market [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved July 25, 2026.
2 Anderson native owner of Harvest Supermarket (19978, November 24). The Anderson Herald. p. 8.
3 (See footnote 2).
4 Moyer, T. (2013, August 26). Supermarket relocates headquarters downtown, plans renovations. The Anderson Herald Bulletin. Web. Retrieved July 25, 2026.
5 (See footnote 4).
6 Lawrence J. “Larry” Vores (2022). Loose Funeral Homes & Crematory [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved July 25, 2026.
7 Chesterfield All-New (1955, December 1). The Anderson Herald. p. 20.
