Concept 5 · Data & Impact

// Strong Roots. Strong Futures.

Bend the curve on rural food access.

Rural independent grocery stores are closing at a rate that will leave a generation of towns without a place to buy food. We train the specialists, and the grocers, who can turn that line around.

Get involved
5
Specialist levels
60+
Graduates since 2023
10 yr
To slow the rate
180°
The long-term goal

The trend line we exist to change

Rural independent grocery store count: the erosion we're working to slow, then reverse.

20102020 Today20352050 We are here
Documented decline If nothing changes Our goal: turn it around

Illustrative: shape shown for direction, not exact figures. Real closure data drops in for launch.

The approach

Short-term roots. Long-term future.

  • Stabilize the roots. Resilience is built in the everyday decisions: pricing, assortment, and where the labor goes.
  • Build the pathway. We bake the recipe for a successful transition into the daily mindset of operating a strong store.
  • Scale locally. How many leaders does it take? A lot, and local connections make the strongest networks.

A store that offers what no one else can becomes irreplaceable to the town it feeds. That is the whole strategy, applied two ways: to the specialists who advise, and to the grocers who run the store.

For specialists

A cascade, not a catalog.

Level 1, RGI's Rural Grocery Transition Specialist course, qualifies you to help a grocer move through transition. The Academy picks up from there. Each level opens only to graduates of the level before it.

Join the specialist list
  • Level 1, Transition Specialist. Via K-State's RGI. The prerequisite for everything.
  • Level 2, Advanced Specialist. 12 weeks on valuation, profitability, identity transition.
  • Ongoing, Community of Practice. Bi-weekly case work with other specialists.
  • Levels 3 to 5, Facilitator track. Train graduates to teach the levels below. Coming soon.
  • The dashboard. Pricing and labor performance vs. revenue, in plain terms.
  • Twice-monthly Zoom. Profitability consultations plus peer breakout rooms.
  • Programming that follows the data. Aggregate patterns decide what we work on.
  • Business Builders, quarterly. Deciding on purpose what your business will be worth.

For grocers · Healthy Bucket

Be the store that can't be replaced.

Upload your financials and see how your pricing and labor are actually performing against your revenue, not at tax time, but while you can still do something about it.

Join the Healthy Bucket list

About us

Stabilizing rural healthy food access.

Rural Transition Academy is a for-profit learning institution offering training, technology, and resources that work on business transition success from both long-term and short-term perspectives. We serve rural Kansas, Western Missouri, and the entire U.S. With Canada and Japan facing the same forces, a global market is a matter of time.

Carly Whorton, Founder

Carly Whorton · Founder

Carly Whorton

Founder & Chief of Field Development

Former rural grocery store owner (Cecil K's Hometown Market, Holton, KS, 2018 to 2023); startup grocery mentor for K-State's Rural Grocery Initiative; architect and lead facilitator of the Rural Grocery Transition Specialist program since its founding in 2022, the only national training program dedicated to rural grocery succession support.

She co-founded Cecil K's in 2017 with no prior grocery background, navigated the store through the 2020 pandemic, opened a second location in 2022, and managed her own exit at the end of 2023, experiencing firsthand the reality of untangling a shared business. The heart of her work is improving the average quality of life on this planet.

Rural Grocery InitiativeViable FoodIllinois Grocery Initiative