A new grocery store has opened in a part of Bloomington that hasn't had one for years.
The Alzebdiehs' path to Bloomington started 16 years ago at a grocery store they owned in the South Deering neighborhood at 106th Street and Torrance Avenue on the south side of the Chicago.
Nidal Alzebdieh was closing the store for the night. When he got in his car, a man came to his window, put a gun to his head and demanded money.
“So I took off. In the time I took off the gun moved from my head and shot me in the arm," Alzebdieh said, pointing to scars on his right arm that remain from the gunshot. “So my arm stopped working and I crashed.”
Alzebdieh nearly bled to death. He says a responding officer used his uniform as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He later had to have his shoulder replaced.
The gunman turned to the other side of the car and shot his wife in the leg. This wasn't the first incident of random violence the Alzebdiehs had encountered at the store, but it would be their last.
Nidal's wife, Dabrona Alzebdieh, said she was traumatized and tired of "running for their lives."
“[I] went to human resources for therapy to get over being scared of coming outside. I had agoraphobia to even come outside. It took me years to actually go to my mailbox," she recalled.
They'd had enough. The couple, who has eight daughters and five sons — all adults now — sold the store, left their home with everything they could carry onto a train and went as far south as they could go with the money they had.
“Everybody got some clothes and we walked out from the house all the way to Bloomington,” he said. ” Where were we going? We didn’t know nothing.”
The Alzebdieh family arrived in Bloomington-Normal, a place they'd never heard of, with $16 left. This was 16 years ago. They've never left.
They stayed for a while at the Home Sweet Home Ministries shelter, where Matt Burgess — now the CEO — helped them get settled.
“Matt truly, truly saved our lives. I don’t know if my kids and everybody else feel like that, but when I came here I was in a lot of trauma after being shot,” she said.
While Dabrona Alzebdieh was still getting regular counseling for that trauma, an incident early after their move to Bloomington helped her realize she really was in a safer place. Alzebdieh was lost one day and went to see Bloomington Police for help.
“It was Sunday, and I went to the Bloomington Police Department and the lady came through on the intercom and stated ‘No, if it’s not an emergency, we are on-call [only].' I’ve never seen that before. I was totally astonished,” she said.
Fast forward to 2025. The Alzebdiehs decided it was time to open a grocery store in Bloomington. It was the family business after all, but there are more than a dozen grocery stores in Bloomington-Normal. Yet, they were surprised to learn that much of west Bloomington does not have easy access to a grocery.
“This is a beautiful place to be, I don’t believe there’s somewhere in this town [where] someone is struggling to find a banana or a fresh orange,” she said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines much of southwest Bloomington as a food desert. Those are lower income areas with limited access to healthy and affordable food. So in late August with the help of business mentors from SCORE, the Alzebdiehs opened South of Chicago Groceries. It's a small neighborhood store across the street from Miller Park.
Dabrona Alzebdieh owns the store with son Joshua, who is also taking welding at Heartland Community College.
The store sells soft drinks, snacks, cereals, Ramen, lots of canned food options and various household supplies like detergent, paper plates and toilet paper.
There's one rack of fresh fruit with bundles of peaches, oranges, lemons and avocados as you enter. Dabrona Alzebdieh says milk, soda and fruit are their best sellers. They can't buy much fruit because they have nowhere to chill it, so it has a short shelf life. They are trying to raise money online to help pay for an open display cooler so they can expand their fresh fruit and vegetable selection.
Meanwhile, they feed soon-to-expire produce to the animals at Miller Park Zoo. The rest goes to the Home Sweet Home shelter.
The store is open seven days a week from 9 a.m.- 9 p.m. The couple staffs the store with the help of a son and daughter. They hope to open a restaurant in the other part of the building where Eric's Restaurant used to be. She says it would sell burgers, pizza, chicken wings, and she'd make soul food dinners on weekends. Dabrona says they had to spend thousands of dollars on a sprinkler system at the former restaurant location, they may as well use that space too.
These are ambitious goals in a neighborhood where many are struggling to make ends meet. Dabrona Alzebdieh says she believes they can make a difference with a friendly face and by truly serving their customers. She says a majority of her customers walk to the store as many have no transportation of their own.
She cites one example where she got a special request to get corn on the cob, when the store had none. She says she drove to another store to buy several earns of corn and returned before the customer has left and sold the corn to her at cost.
“That’s what I am talking about being part of the community. She doesn’t have a vehicle, she needed it, she wanted it and I was able to get it for her,” she said.
Alzebdieh sees the grocery store as filling a vital community need, just as the community has helped her and her family.
“Bloomington has been a lifesaver to me and my family,” she said.
While the store name gives a nod to her hometown Chicago, Alzebdieh says she is now proud to call Bloomington home.
