CAMDEN — The Village of Camden in conjunction with the Preble County Chamber of Commerce and state and local officials celebrated the grand opening of Barnes Butcher Shop in the village with a ribbon cutting on Saturday, June 17.

“I’m also a lifelong Camden resident. So, I’m super excited to be here today is celebrate. Camden is definitely making a comeback and I’m so excited for the Barnes family to continue to invest in our community,” Chamber Executive Director Karen Moss said in kicking off the event.

“We just want to thank everybody for coming out,” Kyle Barnes said. “All the support we’ve received over the last few weeks has been overwhelming, but great. You have a vision, but you don’t know how it’ll turn out and it’s turned out way beyond our expectations.”

Barnes thanked Camden Village Council, and others who helped make opening the new business located at the former IGA building possible.

State Rep. Rodney Creech, also in attendance, was one of those individuals the Barnes family thanked.

“I know you’ve been working on this for a long time” Creech told the Barnes family. ,”We have a lot of ribbon cuttings in Preble County. It’s a great thing. We have so many great people starting businesses, but very rarely do I get to be involved in the process and there was a lot of hoops and things that this business has had to jump through.”

“Kyle connected with me early on when this place was a lot different, looked a lot different than it does today,” Creech continued. “Kyle called me. Got me connected. We were able to make a lot of connections through the state, even locally. I am just so proud of you guys, that you are here for this local community in the county. I just want to congratulate you all. I couldn’t be more proud of you, especially for the village of Camden. What a huge niche to fill.”

Creech presented the Barnes family with a proclamation recognizing the new businesses grand opening. The proclamation, which Creech did not read aloud, noted:

“We are pleased to honor Barnes Butcher Shop for the hard and tireless work, they’ve put into opening a business. After realizing potential in the local IGA, Kyle and Dustin Barnes were struck with an idea. They realized that the community needed a local butcher shop to provide quality products from their family-owned cattle farm to the tables of the families throughout the community. Opening a business that provides this service was no easy feat, as they had to endure a few hurtles to be the first butcher shop to open in the area.

“Kyle Barnes has been cutting meat since he was 18 years old, when he began working at Kroger, for 10 years holding the meat manager position. Mr. Barnes then went on to serve two years at Performance Food Group in Fairfield, followed by his experience at Bussard’s Butcher Shop before pursuing the dream of opening the Barnes Butcher Shop store.

“Preble County could not be more proud to watch this incredible family provide this service to the district, and the surrounding communities. As a former business owner, it’s exciting to witness, and I cannot wait to watch the continued success and growth of their business to come,” Creech’s proclamation continued.

“Thus, with sincere pleasure, I commend Barnes Butcher Shop as one of Ohio’s newest up-and-coming businesses, and express my sincerest excitement about getting to witness this new business grow right here at home, in Preble County. It is an honor to serve you all at such an exciting time.”

“I started my retail work at Kroger’s, and I kept getting bounced around as a meat manager,” Kyle Barnes said. “Then they took cutting out of the stores and I’m like, ‘well, I enjoy cutting,’ so I went and found the company I worked for until I came here — Performance Food Service – which is who I buy all my fresh meat from, because I know it’s good quality. I worked there for three years and I ran the cut for them.”

Barnes said he kept moving up in the company at Performance Food Group and decided he wanted to do something on his own. “The butcher shop was 100 percent a goal,” he noted.

Finding the building, Barnes said he realized Camden was “like a food ghost town.”

“There’s nothing. People have to go 20 minutes at least one way or the other. So I that’s what I did here,” he said. “I definitely wanted to do fresh meat, fresh chicken, fresh pork — the deli meats and cheeses was an add-on. And then we’ve started our grocery selection. People love it. We have all this room in the back here. We’re going to expand as we grow, and just continue filing it.

The butcher shop was a dream for Barnes, who said he had been “having these images run through my mind for three years, and we’ve been in here going on almost four months,” he said of getting the store ready to open. “I mean, we had a lot of elbow grease in this place in 90 days to get to where it’s at and we did most of it ourselves.”

“I try to offer great quality product at a reasonable price,” Barnes said. “I know with the whole COVID thing some things got out of out of hand with inflation and markups and people trying to make money instead of doing right by the people. So that’s just kind of what we aim to do. Just try to greet the village here with great products at a reasonable price. As I always say, we’re trying to make a living, not a killing. So that’s my motto.”

Barnes Butcher Shop, located at 200 Cottage Street in Camden, is open Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Reach Eddie Mowen Jr. at 937-683-4061 and follow on Twitter @emowenjr.