A grocery store built around Ohio-raised meat and produce is set to open just outside German Village next month, with the business now pointing to a November 21 grand opening at 900 S. High St. in the Brewery District. The Farmer's Larder is the brainchild of Jamie Pritchard, owner of WIT Farm, who has spent years selling at the German Village Farmers Market and is now bringing that same local-food pitch indoors.
Pritchard announced her plans for the market in a March 11 social media post, and early reporting from Columbus Underground described a summer opening for the store, with an exact date and address still undisclosed at the time. More recent reporting from Columbus Business First instead pointed to a November opening, and the store's own website has listed a November 21, 2026 grand-opening date at the 900 S. High Street address. It is not clear from available reporting whether the original summer target was formally pushed back or simply evolved as plans firmed up.
Either way, the concept itself has stayed consistent. The Farmer's Larder is being marketed as German Village's grocery, even though its address places it just outside the neighborhood in the Brewery District, and it will carry the typical meat, produce and pantry staples alongside a selection of prepared foods, according to the same Columbus Underground report. Party platters, farm shares with ingredients for various meals, and holiday meals round out the offerings, and the store has already posted online reservations for its Thanksgiving meal package.
A Store Built on Nine Years of Farming
Pritchard's path to retail runs through her own farm operation. She founded WIT Farm in 2021 in eastern Ohio, but by Columbus Underground's account she had already been farming for nine years in Blue Rock, Ohio, by the time the grocery concept took shape — a stretch separately described elsewhere as nearly a decade of livestock-farming experience. WIT Farm will supply meat directly to the new store, and Pritchard has said she considered opening her own shop for years before committing to the project.
She's also been a familiar face at the German Village Farmers Market for eight years, a run that gave her a built-in sense of which local producers she wanted on her shelves. The store is expected to carry products from a fair number of those farmers market suppliers, Columbus Underground reported, and named vendors reportedly featured at The Farmer's Larder include The Farmstead Market, Truest Farms, The Baker's Rack and Anna Bakes Things.
Why Now: A Gap Left by Chapman's Eat Market
The timing lines up with a notable absence in the neighborhood's food retail scene. Chapman's Eat Market, a German Village food retailer at 739 S. Third St., closed in August 2025, and Columbus Underground has reported that its closure helped motivate the Farmer's Larder concept. For a neighborhood that lost a go-to spot for prepared foods and local goods, Pritchard's store is positioned to fill that void with a distinctly farm-to-shelf identity.
That identity is baked into the sourcing numbers Pritchard has set for herself. According to NBC4, the store is targeting roughly 90% of its inventory from Ohio-based farms and producers, with the remaining 10% reserved for gourmet products not otherwise available in the state — a split Columbus Underground likewise described as 90% Ohio producers and 10% gourmet imports.
Funding the Build-Out
Getting from farmers market stand to storefront required real capital. NBC4's report detailed a fundraising campaign with an initial goal of $50,000, a stretch goal of $100,000, and an estimated $135,000 needed in total to launch the store. The station broke down the projected startup costs as $25,000 for lease and buildout, $25,000 for equipment, $50,000 for initial inventory, and $35,000 for working capital and licensing.
That same NBC4 report noted the business had initially been aiming for an opening around July 4, contingent on securing sufficient funding and finishing preparations — a timeline that, per the later reporting on a November opening, did not hold. Whatever the final sequence of delays, Pritchard has settled on daily hours of 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., matching details posted on the store's own website at farmers-larder.com.
For now, the plan on the table is a November 21 opening at 900 S. High St., putting a concrete date behind months of shifting timelines. Shoppers hoping to stock up for the holidays can already find online reservations open for the store's Thanksgiving meal package, giving German Village-area residents a first real taste of what Pritchard has been building toward since she started farming in Blue Rock nearly a decade ago.
