What this town needs is a good food fight.

I am not talking about a brouhaha of flying hot dogs and potato salad, like those cafeteria melees you always see in TV schools but never really encountered in real life. I mean grocery wars.

Before Rainbow closed, we had a nice rivalry going between the two major supermarkets in town. It seems like the groceries market is much more conducive to these kinds of battles than any other commercial sector. You don’t see rival shoe stores ripping each other in their advertising and working like crazy to convince people they have the lowest prices on Birkenstocks, for example, but for some reason you always see similar tactics in towns with more than one supermarket.

My favorite Hy-Vee vs. Rainbow anecdote was when Hy-Vee kept buying the billboard space right next to the Rainbow parking lot and putting up ads touting great savings, and adding not-so-subtle jabs like “No Card Needed!” After a while, the people at Rainbow got sick of it and started parking a huge semi-trailer in front of the billboard. That cracked me up.

But now, of course, Rainbow has fallen victim to the woes of its parent company, Fleming, and the Albert Lea store, along with the Faribault one and a bunch of others, are closed. That means Hy-Vee’s the only game in town, unless you count Buy-N-Save, which is like half a supermarket.

I noticed that Hy-Vee could not resist getting in a parting shot when their competitor closed. They’ve got “Rainbow of Savings” painted on one of their front windows, an obvious reference to their vanquished foe that seems just a little unnecessary. That’s the kind of competitive spirit I like to see in a business.

Having only one big supermarket means that kind of sniping is done for now. More importantly, though, it means everybody in town has to drive to Hy-Vee when they want something from the grocery store. Of course, Hy-Vee had its existing customer base, which seemed like it must be large, judging from the fact that there were never any parking spaces there. But now, even people like me who live pretty close to Skyline Mall have to drive all the way across town to get groceries. Since our family rarely can put a meal together without having to run out and get at least one ingredient, that’s become a pain.

And if parking was bad at Hy-Vee before, try to find a spot now. One newsroom employee even has his own little joke about going grocery shopping these days: “I think I’ll call up to Hy-Vee and make an appointment for this afternoon; we need to get some groceries.”

The delicate equilibrium has been upset. Hy-Vee is a very nice store and all, but clearly, a community our size needs more than one supermarket. It’s just a matter of numbers.

But it will change soon. The Rainbow store will re-open as Nelson’s County Market, and the same month, the new Wal-Mart Supercenter will open, complete with its own grocery store. The supermarket scene will be flooded.

So now, the question will be which stores can thrive in this new scene. Hopefully, all of them can co-exist and do well. There really needs to be something accessible to the west side of town, where a lot of people live, so Nelson’s will have their share of customers. Nobody seems to think Hy-Vee will have much trouble; they’re pretty popular and have a good location. Where Wal-Mart fits in will be interesting. From what I’ve seen of their supercenters, they don’t quite have the selection of other stores, but on certain products, they really knock the prices down.

We’ll have to see how it turns out. One thing’s for sure: It will be competitive, and usually customers win when that happens. Let the food fight begin!

Dylan Belden is the Tribune’s Managing Editor