Janet Roberts Woman of the Year. Photo courtesy of Stace Roberts and the Kern River Valley Chamber of Commerce
When Janet Roberts won Woman of the Year award from the Kern River Valley Chamber of Commerce, this month, she said it was very unexpected and exciting for her to receive the title of “Woman of the Year.”
Roberts is definitely well known to the community. She is currently Treasurer of the chamber’s board of directors.
She and her husband Stace Roberts, who created the poster for the annual Christmas parade, have been married since 2011 when they became a blended family.
Together the couple owns the Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, in Lake Isabella, providing jobs to the community as well as products the valley needs.
Janet said that the store was the perfect fit for the couple because it was an ending career for them, at a company that is family oriented, and one that gives back to the
community, locally owned and within the place they live.
Janet grew up in the Leona Valley and her husband Stace grew up in the nearby town of Mojave. Yet both of them came to the valley previously.
She was in mortgage lending before she dated Stace and before they married. The couple eventually owned a smaller chain of music stores in the Antelope Valley where they rented musical instruments to the local schools.
The Roberts eventually went to live in Mammoth, California, where Janet was doing merchandising for the store Stace worked at, when she was offered a job in merchandising.
Eventually Grocery Outlet offered Stace a position, and Janet and Stace both trained in Sun Valley to work. They were offered the opportunity to work in the Lake Isabella Store in 2019. “I think Fred (Clark of the KRV Chamber) and Orion (Sanders of the Kernville Chamber) were the first people we met,” she said. The couple watched the store being built in Lake Isabella and bought a home up here a couple years ago.
Roberts was on the Christmas Parade Planning Committee, and her friend Lisa Laughlin helped on the day of the parade. Roberts also assisted with the first ever KRV Chamber Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. Roberts assists with the Senior Center Bingo Bonanza, and just joined the chamber’s Fishing Derby Committee.
She and her husband as owners of Grocery Outlet have sponsored the Kern Valley Hospital Foundation’s annual Crabfest fundraiser, the Kernville Rodeo, Whiskey Flats, Wreaths for Vets, Flags on the Boulevard, Yesterfest, the KRV chamber’s Fishing Derby, Outlaw West in Kernville, and the Great Cookie Contest. “We love it. That’s why we’re here. We want to build the community and just make it a really nice place,” she said.
The Woman of the Year also pushed for the new Lake Isabella Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony and for businesses in the valley to have the pleasure of competing with decorating their businesses in a contest the chamber started.
Regarding being nominated, for Woman of the Year Janet said, “I get embarrassed. And then I start to think, am I worthy of that? Am I really a woman of the Year? It makes you look at yourself and go; am I doing enough to have that honor? But yes, I’m very honored.”
Janet Roberts has a good work ethic because she was raised on a farm, and has always been working on something, all of her life. She broke horses, and was involved with English riding, killed her own animals to eat, and was in 4H. She ascribes all she knows to her parents’ efforts teaching her.
“I think that everybody has been very cordial to us here. I know a new grocery store coming in would upset anybody’s apple cart.” She said, “We didn’t come in to take anything over. We just came to offer something different.”
