Eudora Market on Main continues family tradition; William Allen White to make appearance in Baldwin City

As Pam Staab is celebrating the first anniversary of her Eudora Market on Main she anticipates adding a new feature.

Staab opened the store at 724 Main St. in October 2015 after offering a Saturday farmers’ market at the site for about nine months. The store currently has two components, an arts and crafts area in the front where paintings, mosaics, repurposed furniture, homemade aprons and other handiwork of from 12 to 15 vendors are offered on consignment, and a rear section in which customers will find homegrown produce, eggs, baked goods and jellies and jams supplied by local producers. She is always looking for new vendors.

She came to the idea through her partnership with her brother, Fred Trefz, in a greenhouse growing lettuce. “A lot of people don’t know how difficult it is to market locally grown produce,” she said.

Helping with the store are three of its vendors, Sharon Musick who makes the aprons sold at the store, Sharon Farr, the vendor of the store’s soaps, lotions, oils and apothecary products, and Marie Winter, who produces the mosaic pieces.

Staab plans to soon offer prepared food at the store with completion of needed modifications and required city inspections. She confesses she’s “not a chef” and envisions the food offered will be prepared by area chefs using locally produced foods.

“We won’t have a full-blown kitchen,” she said. “We’ll reheat food prepared in other commercial kitchens. I want to be able to offer a healthy food option, especially to seniors who can’t travel to where those options are available.”

The storefront has a longtime association with her family, Staab said. It was the home of her great uncle Carl’s Trefz Variety Store for seven decades before the lifelong bachelor closed up shop in 1976. The store was vacant except for storage through the 1980s and 1990s, she said. She started investing in the storefront in 2000, installing the indoor plumbing that her great uncle, who lived across the alley from his business, didn’t need, a heating and air conditioning unit and otherwise sprucing up the building. It was the home for a number of businesses before she decided to quit leasing the property and continue a family tradition with Eudora Market on Main.

“I was thinking the other day, my great uncle had Trefz Variety Store here for 70 years,” Staab said. “In a lot of ways, I think this is a variety store.”

The store is open from noon to 5 p.m Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 10 am. to 6 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.


Jack Wright, Kansas University theater professor emeritus, will present the re-enactment program “William Allen White: The Kansas of His Time,” starting a 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Baldwin City Library.