Mentone Market

Mentone, Alabama is a small mountain town, and for locals here the day usually starts or ends with a stop at Mentone Market. The market sits right on AL Highway 117 in the middle of town, and it has operated in one form or another as the community’s general store for more than 80 years. It is the kind of place where a traveler can pick up gas, a cold drink, and a wood-fired pizza all in the same stop, and where a longtime Mentone resident can pick up milk, a fishing lure, and a locally made gift on the way home.

The market describes itself as “the one stop for locals and tourists of Mentone, Alabama,” and that phrase holds up. Shelves are stocked with groceries and sundries, but the market also carries local gifts, toys, board games, and treats that lean toward the handmade and regional rather than mass produced. Visitors browsing for a souvenir of a weekend on Lookout Mountain will find items with more personality than what turns up at a typical highway convenience store.

Food is a big part of what draws people through the door. The market runs a lunch counter Friday through Sunday from 11 AM to 2 PM, serving pizza and other made-to-order items that have become a favorite stop for hikers coming down from DeSoto State Park or Little River Canyon and for cabin renters looking for something easier than a full grocery run. Posts from the market show hand-tossed pizza, seasonal chocolate bark, and shelves of toys and games, giving a sense of a store that tries to cover a little bit of everything a mountain town needs.

Kristen Emory owns and operates Mentone Market, keeping the business independently run rather than part of any larger chain, which fits the character of a town where nearly every storefront is owned by someone who lives nearby. The market keeps long hours by small-town standards, open seven days a week, Monday through Saturday from 7 AM to 7 PM and Sunday from 7 AM to 6 PM, which makes it a reliable stop whether someone needs breakfast supplies before a hike or a snack after a long day at the canyon.

The building itself carries some of that lived-in, decades-old character that visitors associate with Mentone as a whole. The market describes its setting as a “cozy corner of the Alabama Appalachia,” and the description fits a store that has clearly been shaped by generations of use rather than built to a corporate template. It is a working general store first, with a gift shop’s worth of local goods layered on top, and that combination is part of what makes it a genuine stop rather than a tourist trap.

The market’s location on AL Highway 117 puts it close to many of the reasons people visit Mentone in the first place. DeSoto Falls and DeSoto State Park sit a short drive away, and Little River Canyon National Preserve is close enough that stopping in for supplies before or after a visit barely adds any time to a day trip. Because Mentone itself has fewer than 500 year-round residents, a stop that combines groceries, prepared food, and gifts in one storefront carries a lot more importance than it might in a bigger town, and Mentone Market has settled into that role comfortably.

The address, 5872 AL Highway 117 in Mentone, is easy to spot along the town’s short main corridor, with parking right out front. Visitors calling ahead can reach the market at (256) 634-4686 to check on lunch counter hours or ask what is currently in stock, since a small, independently run store’s offerings can shift with the season and with what local makers bring in. For anyone building a day around Mentone’s shops and outdoor spots, Mentone Market is worth treating as a starting point rather than an afterthought.