When you ask 78-year-old founder Jim Tadych why he has been in the supermarket business for more than a half-century, he will tell you it is because he loves people. Being able to fill the needs of his customers has been his passion from the beginning, he said.

That mindset has carried Tadych from his first store in Brillion, Wis., in July 1968 to the most recent acquisition in Clintonville, Wis.

It should come as no surprise Tadych took to the grocery business. His father, Victor, got into it as a teenager in the 1920s and left school early for his first meat market job. That job led Victor to open Fairview Market in Manitowoc, Wis., a small general store and market where Jim started packing potatoes when he was grade-school age. He would work before and after school — that is, when he and his brother, Jerry, weren’t throwing rotten potatoes at each other.

In the early 1960s, Jim took time away from his father’s family business to serve his country in the Army. After his return, he got married and started a family.

TADYCH’S ECONOFOODS FOUNDER Jim Tadych and his wife, Pat, outside the grocery store he acquired in 1968 in Brillion, Wis. (Submitted photo)

Realizing his father’s store could not adequately support the many family members now involved, Jim in the mid-1960s began searching for his own store to buy.

The search proved difficult until 1968, when he found a small “mom and pop” grocery store in Brillion, Wis. It was a turn-of-the-century blacksmith shop converted into a store, with less than 700 square feet of space. For decades it was known as Doughty’s Grocery, although the Keenway name remained on the building. Today, a photo of this store is prominently displayed in every Tadych’s Econofoods location.

Original owner Francis Doughty had passed away and his wife, Freida, was ready to sell. However, she didn’t realize Jim was a potential buyer but thought he was applying for a job. She told him, “We’re not hiring anymore.”

Ultimately, Freida Doughty sold the store to Jim. Both she and his father helped finance the deal and further supported Jim by not calling in their loans during the early years.

The store served as a modest beginning for Jim. He, his wife Pat and their three kids lived above the store. In his first days of self-employment, Jim asked himself what he had gotten into more than once.

But T&C Market would expand to Shawano, Wis., then Sturgeon Bay, Wis. The store in Sturgeon Bay brought in a new concept of a warehouse-style store, along with the name Econofoods.

In the Upper Peninsula, Tadych’s Econofoods has locations in Iron Mountain, plus Houghton and Marquette.

His son, Mike, now is president of the company after starting in the family business as a manager at the Iron Mountain store in 1992. Another son, Marc, is based at the Sturgeon Bay store and handles new product acquisitions.

Fifty years after T&C Market first opened its doors, Jim Tadych knows the answer to the question he asked himself in 1968.

“I have gotten into not only a business or career, but a way of life. A blessed life filled with many challenges,” Jim Tadych said. “But those challenges are offset by the many great friends, employees and customers I get to work with every day.”