The building, gutted. The roof, collapsed. Rubbish spilled from the gaping windows, a grim testament to the fire’s destructive power.
Early Monday afternoon, though the flames had been extinguished, visible damage from the fire that decimated Kinlaw’s Supermarket Saturday night remained. Much of the building was reduced to rubble — a charred shell of the bustling meat market that has been a staple of east Fayetteville for years.
For more than four decades, Kinlaw’s Supermarket, located on Sapona Road in east Fayetteville, has been feeding the Fayetteville community and supplying fresh meat to customers and catering services to local businesses.
Tommy Kinlaw and his brother Bobby founded the meat market in 1979, and expanded the business to include a restaurant a few years later, Kinlaw’s Welcome Grill. Kinlaw said the restaurant serves about 6,000 people a week, despite only being open for two meals a day and being closed on weekends.
The weekend fire, which lasted several hours Oct. 19, was caused by an electrical short in the building, Kinlaw said. The fire ultimately required about 2 million gallons of water to extinguish. Fire crews dumped about 4,000 gallons a minute for the first eight hours, through Saturday night and into Sunday morning, Kinlaw said. The Fayetteville Fire Department finished work at about 1 p.m. Sunday, he said. No one was injured from the fire.
Kinlaw said he had been “anxious at first,” about the fire — which news had woken him up after about an hour and a half of sleep — but felt reassured by the love and support the store has since received from the community and a large group of loyal customers. Kinlaw’s son, Travis Kinlaw, runs the day-to-day operations at the store.
“We had to cut the phone off in my son’s pocket, my one that runs the store over here, Travis, he was getting 28 texts a minute and he couldn’t handle it because there was so many people wanting to talk to him,” Tommy Kinlaw told CityView. “He just had to stop it for a little bit because there are so many decisions that are critical to this moment.”

Strong community support
A few long-time shoppers dropped in and out of the parking lot across the street from Kinlaw’s on Oct. 21, taking pictures of the building ruins. One woman told CityView she had shopped at Kinlaw’s for 40 years, and couldn’t believe what she’d seen on the news earlier that Monday morning — she had to come out to see it herself.
A longtime employee, Jack Muzquiz, pointed out the various pieces of black debris from the fire in the parking lot: a charred onion, a tin can, a plastic bottle, even a Kinlaw’s business card on the ground.
Other passersby who identified themselves as friends and family of the Kinlaw’s stopped by to offer condolences. Adding to the scene on Monday, city contractors, who were performing routine road maintenance unrelated to the fire, sprayed a tack coat onto Sapona Road, the same street where Kinlaw’s is located. Waylon Nobles, an engineering inspector for the city who happened to be overseeing the roadwork, told CityView he had done some concrete projects for the Kinlaw’s over the years, and described them as “really good people.” Nobles said he had been a regular shopper at the market, too.
“It’s a shame it happened,” he said, gazing at the large pile of rubble and blackened walls of the former meat market. “It’s very sad. I hope they rebuild because they did a lot for this community right here. Gave a lot of people jobs.”
“Your heart sank when you saw it,” Nobles added.
Kinlaw’s is known for providing employment opportunities for those with no other place to turn, such as former prisoners looking for jobs and to re-enter the community. The business also regularly feeds people who cannot afford food, according to Kinlaw and community members.
“We feed a lot of people, and sometimes we have to feed people that can’t feed themselves,” Kinlaw told CityView.
That also includes strangers. Kinlaw said, the business was able to put together a feast for the family of a woman with intestinal cancer. The woman has four children, he said. Her friend had reached out to Kinlaw’s and asked if they could help provide a meal, Kinlaw said.
“We did it the other night and all the children and the grandparents just broke down and cried,” Kinlaw said. “They said, ‘[We] couldn’t believe anybody loves us so much.’ We don’t know them. They don’t know us. But they ate a great supper.”
The show must go on
Kinlaw’s is not wasting any time getting back to business as usual.
“We’ve got a total plan already in place,” Kinlaw told CityView on Monday.
Kinlaw said the restaurant, spared by the fire, opened for business on Oct. 22 but he estimates the grocery store will not be open again until next August. The business has already found a builder, Kinlaw said, and they expect to complete the project in 10 to 11 months. Now, Kinlaw is waiting on the business’s insurance company to give the go-ahead to start the rebuilding process.
Kinlaw said his family plans to rebuild the market in the same location, with the hope of expanding it to be closer to the restaurant by purchasing the vacant building that currently separates the market and the restaurant.
“And we’re making a personal offer on that … building right between us that’s been vacant for years and it needs to be torn down,” Kinlaw said. “But I would like to put the store there and then we’d have the whole place to park. But we’ve got a lot of things going on. It’s happening really fast.”
Kinlaw, a deeply religious man, turned to his faith in the wake of the destruction. He said he had woken up early that Monday morning, at 3:30 a.m., with a message from God about his family’s troubles in the form of a psalm.
Standing in the parking lot of the restaurant Monday, he pulled out his Bible from his truck, an old-fashioned copy, bound in leather, and read the scripture aloud. He recited Psalm 41:1–3, verses describing how God blesses and protects those who are kind to the poor.
“But my word confirmed the fact that he’s going to take care of it,” Kinlaw said. “The song … ‘He’s got the whole world in his hand. He’s got me and you, too.’ I believe that with all my heart.”