A local grocery-store legend and kind-hearted philanthropist has died.
Dan Coborn, 86, who died March 15, left so many good, enduring things in his nearly nine decades in the greater St. Cloud area.
Besides being a great entrepreneur, Coborn was extraordinarly generous in “giving back to the community,” as he called it. He, his wife Mabel and their five children have been constantly donating, directly and indirectly, to scores of good causes in the area, which include the CentraCare Coborn Cancer Center, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the local YMCA, St. John’s University facilities, scholarship funds for the universities of St. John’s and St. Benedict’s, and United Way of Central Minnesota that Dan and Mabel Coborn helped start.
Such generosity was not limited to the greater St. Cloud area. Coborn and family have donated consistently to the many cities and areas where customers shop in their dozens of stores that include Coborn’s, Cash Wise and the Little Dukes and Holiday gas stations.
Dan Coborn was a third-generation businessman. His grandfather, Chester, started a produce store in Sauk Rapids in 1912, then nine years later he opened the first Coborn’s grocery store in that city. Chester’s offspring and their offspring were always passionately committed to the grocery-store business, which grew steadily, one success after another. In 1963, two more Coborn’s were opened – one in Foley, the other on St. Cloud’s Fifth Avenue S. near the college area.
Many in this area are old enough to remember shopping at the south St. Cloud store. Before that, the larger St. Cloud grocery stores were Piggly Wiggly (where downtown Perkins is now) and further to the west Red Owl and Super Valu.
Coborn stores were always innovative, especially in featuring food products that customers wanted, such as ingredients for ethnic foods – Chinese, Mexican-American, as well as more varieties of fruits and vegetables. As society grew in new directions and as more people began to cook more adventurously, Coborn’s always strove to accommodate their customers with food products that had been impossible or hard to find at other stores.
Besides Dan Coborn’s keen awareness of customer needs, he was determined to serve cities directly through philanthropy and also through civic participation. He served on the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce, the St. Cloud Hospital Board and the boards of schools and colleges.
We who have long lived in the greater St. Cloud area and the newer people who live here now should be grateful for Dan Coborn and his family. Coborn was a classic example of a successful entrepreneur and visionary who loved to share that success, in so many ways, with others.
Thank you, Dan Coborn.
