This Mennonite Country Store in Texas Is Stacked With Bulk Foods and Homemade Goods

My grocery list has never once survived contact with a bulk bin. I walk in for oats. I walk out with oats, two kinds of dried cherries, a bag of baking chips I have no plan for, and a fry pie I ate in the parking lot.

So I have a theory about Olde Towne Country Store in Itasca. Nobody leaves with only what they came for. They leave with more, and happier. The place greets you with a warm-bread welcome the second the door swings open, and discipline is a lost cause from there.

Below, I will walk you through the bulk bins, the jars of homemade everything, the bakery case, the deli counter with more meats than I can count on both hands, and the two families who built it. Bring a cooler. You will need it.

Bulk Bins and Scoop-Your-Own Staples

The bulk section is the reason regulars plan a whole trip around this store. Bins and clear containers hold flour, sugar, oats, rice, dried beans, pasta, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, candy, snack mixes and the kind of baking supplies a big supermarket buries on a bottom shelf.

You take exactly what you need. Half a cup of pecans for one pie, or five pounds for the holidays. A spoonful of a spice you use twice a year, or a full jar. The price stays fair either way, and nothing goes stale in the back of your pantry.

Regulars talk about the hard-to-find stuff most. One reviewer on Google summed it up with “Love this place! Really cool items!” and that tracks with what I keep hearing. Odd flours, old-fashioned candies, mixes your grandmother used, all in a store about the size of a small-town post office.

Pro tip: bring your own list, then abandon it. The fun of a bulk store is the stuff you did not know existed until you saw the label.

I always look for the candy first. Old-fashioned bulk candy, the kind sold by the scoop, is a country store tradition, and it is the cheapest way to make a kid (or a grown adult in a hurry) very happy on the drive home.

Jars of Homemade Everything

The shelves near the bulk bins are where the homemade goods live, and this is the corner that sends people home with a full basket. Jams, jellies and preserves in glass jars. Pickled things. Relishes. Sauces and spreads made in small batches rather than by the truckload.

The handmade jellies and preserves are the item repeat visitors talk about most, according to a Travelmag roundup of Texas Amish and Mennonite style markets. That matches the pattern in reviews, where someone always mentions a jar they wish they had bought two of.

My advice is simple. Pick one jar you recognize and one you do not. A pepper jelly over cream cheese with crackers from the bulk section makes a better weeknight snack than anything in a drive-through bag.

The store also carries kitchen supplies and small gifts, the practical kind. A wooden spoon, a good pie plate, a canning tool you have hunted for online with no luck. Paired with a jar of preserves, it is a hostess gift that actually gets used.

Bread You Can Smell From the Sidewalk

Homemade bread is the store’s calling card. Loaves come out fresh, and the smell hits before you have finished closing the door behind you. White, wheat, and the one everyone talks about: jalapeno cheese bread.

The store’s own deli page calls jalapeno cheese bread “a favorite for many,” and reviewers agree. One regular’s standing order is black forest ham on jalapeno cheese bread. That sandwich alone justifies the drive from Fort Worth.

The same bread becomes the sandwich rolls at the deli counter, which is the trick that makes lunch here so good. The bread was never a delivery. It was baked in the building.

Buy a loaf for the road and it holds up beautifully. Toast a slice the next morning with butter and a spoon of that jam you could not resist. That is breakfast solved.

Fry Pies, Whoopie Pies and the Case You Cannot Walk Past

The bakery case is where willpower goes to die. Pies with real fruit fillings and proper crusts. Thick cookies. Cinnamon rolls. Whoopie pies, the chocolate ones especially, which one reviewer admits to being flat-out addicted to.

Then there are the fry pies, the Pennsylvania Dutch answer to the handheld pastry. A fry pie is a pocket of dough filled with fruit or a sweet cream filling, fried until golden, then glazed. It is built to eat with one hand while the other hand drives.

Reviewers call them excellent, and they sell out fast on busy days. If you show up at three on a Saturday hoping for a full case, you are gambling. Come in the morning.

Did you know? Whoopie pies and fry pies both trace back to Amish and Mennonite kitchens in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Finding them baked fresh in a Hill County town of about 1,600 people is a small miracle.

A Deli Counter With Twenty-Seven Meats

I counted the deli menu twice. Twenty-seven meats. Twenty-one cheeses. All sliced to order at whatever thickness you ask for, and all available by the pound to take home or stacked into a sandwich on that homemade bread.

The meats run from the familiar (honey ham, roast beef, turkey breast) to the delightfully old-school. Lebanon bologna. Sweet Lebanon bologna. Liverwurst. Pickle and pimento loaf. Corned beef and pastrami for anyone who misses a real East Coast deli.

The cheese list is just as much fun. Cooper Sharp American, horseradish cheddar, habanero jalapeno cheddar, green onion, smoked cheddar, muenster jalapeno, baby Swiss, havarti, and a country bacon cheese I would happily eat in cubes with a toothpick.

A sandwich or wrap runs $6.25 with one meat and one cheese, and you pick your bread: jalapeno cheese, a white or wheat bun, or a garlic and herb wrap. Subs come in six or twelve inch. Extra meats and cheeses add a couple of dollars each.

One Google reviewer called it “one of the best sandwiches I have ever had.” Another wrote, “This is a wonderful place to stop in for a fresh lunch.” There is a soup of the day and chili in cooler months, and a few tables if you want to eat in.

Feeding a crowd? Deli trays start at a five-pound tray for $45, enough for fifteen to twenty people, and go up to a ten-pound tray for $87. Order a day ahead and pick up to three meats and three cheeses.

My order, if you want it: black forest ham, Cooper Sharp, mustard and banana peppers on jalapeno cheese bread. Then a half pound of sweet Lebanon bologna to take home, because you cannot find it in most of Texas and it makes a fried bologna sandwich worth writing about.

From a Highway Store to Main Street

The story starts in Grandview, a few miles up Interstate 35W. Edwin and Leah Miller ran the original Country Store there on the frontage road, and locals still call it “the old Mennonite store.” It earned a reputation for honest ingredients and homemade quality.

James and Jennifer Martin moved to Itasca in 2014 with nine years of country store experience already behind them. In 2017 the Martins partnered with the Millers, moved the whole operation to West Main Street in Itasca, and gave it a new name: Olde Towne Country Store.

Nothing important got lost in the move. The recipes came along. So did the bulk bins, the deli habits and the regulars, who simply started driving to a different exit.

The store says its aim is to “provide great service, serve awesome food, and portray a culture of Christ centered values in a pleasant cheerful atmosphere.” Reviewers use the word nostalgic a lot. A few say the place gives them “feelings of home.” That is the whole point.

Small-Town Itasca, Home of the Wampus Cats

Itasca sits in the northeast corner of Hill County, on the edge of the Blackland Prairie, about 45 miles south of Fort Worth. It started as a station on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad in 1881 and incorporated in 1885. The 2020 census counted 1,562 residents.

The town’s claim to fame is its high school mascot. Itasca teams are the Wampus Cats, a name from a 1920s locker room where, legend says, a player shouted that the team had played “like wampus cats.” Both ESPN and The New York Times have run stories on it.

Main Street is short and walkable, and the store sits right on it. Grab your sandwich, take a slow lap, and you will have seen the town. That is part of the charm.

If you are making a day of it, Hillsboro and its courthouse square are 15 minutes south, and the outlet stores off I-35 are on the way. But I would spend the extra time in the store. There is always one more shelf you missed.

Tips Before You Go

Go in the morning. The bakery case is fullest early, the fry pies vanish on busy days, and the deli line is shortest before noon.

Bring a cooler and ice packs. Deli meats, cheeses and fresh bread all ride better cold, and you will buy more of each than you planned.

Check the day. The store is open Monday through Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday until 6 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is closed on Sunday, so do not build a Sunday drive around it.

Ask questions. Reviewers say the staff know how the products are made and are glad to explain, which is how you end up trying a cheese you had never heard of. Take the recommendation.

Online ordering and gift cards are available, and party trays need 24 hours’ notice. Call ahead at 254-687-5052 if you are driving a long way for one specific item.

How to Get There

Where: Olde Towne Country Store, 102 W Main St, Itasca, TX 76055

From Fort Worth, take I-35W south for about 45 minutes and follow the signs into Itasca. From Dallas, it is roughly an hour and a quarter down I-35E and then I-35W. Waco is about 45 minutes north on I-35. Main Street parking is easy and free.

Fill a Basket and Take the Slow Road Home

There is a version of grocery shopping most of us only half remember. A scoop in your hand. Someone behind the counter who knows what the bologna tastes like because they sliced it that morning. This store is that version, alive and well on a Texas main street.

So point the car toward Hill County. Fill a basket with things you cannot get anywhere else, eat a fry pie before you reach the highway, and try to leave with only what was on your list. I already know how that ends. So do you.

Featured image: Michael Randall via Olde Towne Country Store