I love Richmond. I will tell anyone I meet about how much I love Richmond. Whenever someone will tell me that Richmond isn't a big city (it really isn't) or that it isn't relevant (which it totally is), I throw out one of the greatest Richmond statistics I know: Richmond, Virginia has the most grocery stores per capita of any major city in the country.

This may seem like a pretty strange statistics, and to be quite frank, it is. Why would a city with only around a million people in the metropolitan area need so many grocery stores?In the Richmond area in 2015, there were 1,532 grocery stores, including 122 superstores. I mean, is it totally necessary for us to have Martin's, Kroger, Food Lion, Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and newcomers Aldi and Wegman's, not to mention the plethora of local grocery stores? As you enter Carytown, you can clearly see four different grocery stores from the traffic light.

However, it wasn't always this way. Back in the 90's, there was one dominant grocery store: Ukrop's. This local supermarket chain held over 40 percent of the market share on groceries in the Richmond area. Ukrop's beat out Food Lion for the top spot by a landslide, despite having less locations than Food Lion. By the late 90's, pretty much all of the competition, fighting for consumer dollars while only receiving single-digit market share, had closed.

However, when Food Lion was bought out by the Belgian Delhaize Group, Food Lion was forced to sell many of its Richmond-area locations to Kroger in order to comply with antitrust requirements.

For over 30 years, Ukrop's was an absolute anomaly. It was almost unheard of to the leading, dominant grocery store for a major metropolitan area be a locall, family owned business. In fact, the anomaly that was Ukrop's was studied by marketing students regarding the importance of customer service and valued customer programs.

However, the Ukrop's anomaly was no more by 2009. Food Lion finally took over the crown that Ukrop's had held for years. Within a year, the Richmond favorite had been sold to Giant Food Stores and were re-named "Martin's." This summer, 3 Martin's stores will close, and the remaining 19 may close as well in the near future.

In the past few weeks, a new potentially dominant grocery store entered the Richmond market. Wegman's, a company out of New York, built two 115,000 square foot stores in the Richmond area, in both Henrico and Midlothian. This Whole Foods meets Ukrop's meets small city grocery store has been a tremendous hit for the people of Richmond. With a large selection of prepared foods (very similar to what Ukrop's used to do) the store feels like coming home to many of those who have had a hole in their heart since the departure of Ukrop's.

Although Martin's and Food Lion still remain on top for now, Wegman's is almost certain to beat both of these grocery stores out. When all is said and done, many of Richmond's grocery stores will likely close as Wegman's gains the Richmond Grocery Store crown.

But hey, who knows? Maybe the grocery store capitol of the United States will stay number one in the long run. Or maybe my favorite Richmond fun fact will be false within a few years. In the mean time, I plan on constantly reminding everyone I know that Richmond IS a relevant city, because who else can brag that they have the most grocery stores-per-capita in the entire country?