About us
Rural Transition Academy is a for-profit learning institution geared at stabilizing rural healthy food access by offering training courses, technology, and other resources that work on business transition success from both long-term and short-term perspectives.
The market
All rural areas in Kansas, Western Missouri, and the entire United States that have local food access and want to keep it. The issues facing rural independent grocers in the U.S. mimic closely what grocers in Canada and Japan are facing — a global market for both Specialists and Grocers is a matter of time.
Why it matters
Rural prosperity, slow living at the pace of the natural world, and having access to everything you need to sustain it. The measurable version is the trend line on rural independent grocer closures — and, within two to three decades, turning that rate a full 180 degrees.
Meet the founder
Former rural grocery store owner (Cecil K's Hometown Market, Holton, KS, 2018–2023); startup grocery mentor for K-State's Rural Grocery Initiative beginning 2021; architect and lead facilitator of the Rural Grocery Transition Specialist program since its founding in 2022.
In 2017, Carly co-founded Cecil K's Hometown Market, a full-service rural grocery store in Holton, Kansas — named after the great-grandfather she shared with her cousin and business partner. With no prior background in grocery, store operations, HR, or construction, she took a paragraph of a vision and roughly a million dollars through business planning, construction remodel and full grocery store design, launching with a grand opening in February 2018.
The store navigated a global pandemic in 2020 — pivoting to phone orders, curbside pickup, and delivery while communicating transparently with the community through daily Facebook Live updates for roughly 90 days. A second location opened in 2022. At the end of 2023, Carly navigated her own exit from the business, experiencing firsthand the reality of untangling a shared business and finding footing on the other side of something she had built.
Carly comes loaded with belief and a hunger for solving something that makes a positive impact for as many people at once. Specifically, the heart of her work is improving the average quality of life on this planet.
Rural Grocery InitiativeViable FoodIllinois Grocery Initiative