Milestone shopping spree leads to fitting winner

Eight-year-old Lily had her strategy planned out long before she gripped the handle of a shopping cart Saturday.

Technically, it was her father, Steve Whitman, who had won the three-minute shopping spree at Fair Market. But the second-grader at Alcester-Hudson Elementary School wasn’t about to be left out.

So 15 minutes before the shopping spree started, Lily was running up and down an outside ramp to warm up. By that time, she already had walked up and down the aisles and knew exactly where to find the boxes of cereal, the Flyboy-donated doughnuts, the boxes of Jell-O pudding and the canned vegetables.

And — her personal favorite — packages of Starburst candy.

Lily’s planning paid off. When the contents of her three shopping carts were totaled up, Lily and her dad had scooped up $242.39 worth of groceries. That’s with the deep discounts offered by Fair Market, a reduced-price food store. Even at a big-box store like Walmart, Fair Market owner Kristin Johnson estimated, those three carts of groceries would have cost twice that much.

Johnson hosted the shopping spree at Fair Market to mark a milestone for the store. It now has 3,000 followers on Facebook. She started Fair Market in March 2021 on South Carolyn Avenue and moved to a larger location at 4510 E. 10th St. earlier this month.

Shoppers at the original location were given the chance to sign up; Johnson estimates she ended up with half a shopping cart filled with names. After stirring up all the slips of paper, it was Whitman who ended up the lucky winner.

But, with the exception of a few packages of Starbursts for Lily, neither Whitman nor his wife, Marie Murfin, will keep any of the groceries. Instead, they will be placed inside the Blessing Box the couple have established in front of their thrift store, Booth 202, at 1801 W. 12th St.

Whitman and Murfin buy, sell and trade new and used items at their store, but five months ago they decided to also give people in need a place where they could find nonperishable goods at no cost.

“I had seen book boxes in front of houses,” Murfin said, referring to the Little Free Libraries that offer people an opportunity to share books at no cost. “I wanted to do the same thing with food, but we live on a dead end and people wouldn’t see it.”

She shared the idea with her husband, who decided to surprise her with a completed box. In the five months since it went into operation, it has become so popular they restock the box several times a day.

“It empties two or three times a day,” Whitman said. “A lot of people contribute, so it’s gotten pretty self-sufficient, but three or four times a week we fill it with supplies from our own pocket.”

Both Whitman and Murfin have gone through tough times in the past when they didn’t have much, she said. Now that they are more financially secure with two businesses — they also operate a lawn-care and snow-removal service — they have decided to make sure they pay it forward. Their philosophy for the Blessing Box is “take what you need, leave what you can,” Murfin said.

Winning the shopping spree was a blessing in disguise that will be passed on to others, Whitman said.

Lily knows exactly what goes fastest from the Blessing Box. She helps with the restocking most weekends when she accompanies her parents to Booth 202. That’s why she knew she wanted a mixture of healthy foods along with special treats.

Her first stop was the Little Debbie cakes, and then it was down to the bags of chips and popcorn. With Whitman helping her pull items from the shelves and with Murfin and Lily’s aunt Lindsay Jordan cheering from the sidelines, Lily filled first one and then two and then three carts with ketchup and bread, cereal and pancake mix, doughnuts and bagels. Despite knocking her head against a shelf as she pulled boxes, Lily kept on moving.

“This will feed a lot of people,” her father said, encouragingly.

After a stop to toss in candy bars and gum, Johnson led the countdown — “Five, four, three, two, one” — and the shopping spree was over. Ten-year-old Vivien Johnson expertly totaled up the groceries while Lily and Jordan unloaded the carts and Murfin began putting the groceries in boxes and bags. When finished, they drove directly to Booth 202 to make sure the Blessing Box was filled.