Jeffcoats Family Market marks five years serving Quitman County

Jeffcoats Family Market marked five years in Marks as Quitman County’s most visible in-county answer to a basic problem: where families buy groceries. James and Doris Jeffcoat opened the store in March 2021 in a property that had sat vacant for years, bringing full-service food access back to the county seat after the old supermarket closed.

That reopening mattered because residents had been living with the loss every week. Mississippi State University Extension Service said that from 2017 to 2021, shopping for groceries meant driving nearly an hour to Batesville and back, while other reporting described trips that took 30 to 90 minutes round trip. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Foods Financing Initiative also provided a $200,000 allocation to help make the building viable for a full-service store, underscoring how hard it can be to restore food retail in a small rural county.

The store’s fifth anniversary, celebrated on April 13, 2026, showed that the project became more than a short-term fix. Quitman County had been in a food-desert situation before the Jeffcoats reopened the market, and one account said the county’s previous supermarket closed on June 17, 2017. Another placed the grand opening on April 5, 2021, making the gap in full-service grocery access roughly four years long.

For people in Marks, the difference has been practical and immediate. Samuel McCray described the store as “a lifeline” and “a godsend,” language that reflects what a local grocery means in a county where every extra trip costs time and fuel. Coverage of the market also said local producers have benefited because Jeffcoats Family Market buys directly from them, keeping more food sales tied to nearby farms and suppliers instead of sending those dollars to Batesville, Clarksdale or Lambert.

The store’s role is larger than one checkout line. Quitman County peaked at about 29,000 residents in the 1940s before decades of decline tied to the Great Migration and mechanization of agriculture, and the county’s retail base never fully recovered. In that setting, Jeffcoats Family Market functions as everyday infrastructure, giving Marks a dependable place to buy food, supporting local jobs and helping keep the county seat viable for the people who live there.