Shop Keeper

The owner/proprietor/manager of a small retail store.

In The Western and many other low-population settings, the Shop Keeper is the person who runs the "General Store" which sells (and sometimes buys) just about anything the locals or visitors could possibly need. He or she is a fairly important member of the community, since everyone visits their establishment while in town for vital supplies. This makes the general store a good informal meeting place and a handy source of local gossip. This kind of store is often the Only Shop in Town.

In larger or more modernized communities, shopkeepers tend to be more specialized, at first between perishable items and "dry goods", and increasingly narrowing down to the point where one store might only sell candles and candle accessories, and half-a-dozen shops might need to be visited for a single day's shopping trip.

A shopkeeper often fills the role of Meek Townsman in Western stories—he's got a business to protect, after all. Relatively rarely, one might be seen as a Corrupt Hick who uses the fact that he's the only source of supplies to dictate policy to the town.

Asian Store Owner is a subtrope of this common enough to merit its own page. If the merchant chooses to travel around to sell things instead of staying in one place, see Intrepid Merchant.

Examples of Shop Keeper include:

Comic Books

• An EC Comics story featured a drugstore owner who was miserly, paranoid and exceedingly crabby. During the story, he flips out when a little girl sets up a lemonade stand in front of his store. He's so obnoxious about this "competition" that the locals buy her lemonade just to spite him. Since this is an EC Comic, it turns out that he's the one secretly supplying the little girl's lemonade. He built up a Jerkass Facade over decades to prevent people from taking advantage of him, and just can't get himself to drop it for genuine charity cases.
• Jonathon and Martha Kent in the Pre Crisis Superboy stories ran a general store in Smallville.

Literature

• Nels Oleson of Little House on the Prairie.
• Mr. Grafton in Shane, though he's not the Meek Townsman; he keeps a sawed-off shotgun to protect his place and is so renowned for being Tough But Fair that he's the unofficial magistrate for the town.

Live-Action Television

• Gracie Leigh in Jericho. (And later Dale and Skyler after her death.)
• Mr. Hooper of Sesame Street.
• Mr. Drucker on Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. Also doubles as postmaster and newspaper editor.
• Loren Bray, who ran the town general store on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
• Arkwright from Open All Hours, although he can be more of a CMOT Dibbler.
• Ike Godsey on The Waltons

Video Games

• Very common in RPGs in general.
• Tom Nook, the raccoon tanuki proprietor of the local store in every Animal Crossing village. From Wild World on, the Able Sisters nearby specialize in clothing, accessories, and umbrellas.
• Hachi, retired Orange Star CO from the Advance Wars games (Wars World trilogy).
• Rinnosuke, The One Guy from Touhou Project who sells antiques and rarities in the human village.
• Recette, the main character of the Simulation Game/Action RPG Recettear.
• Fantasy Quest's shopkeeper is a warm befuddled man who refuses to talk of matters above his station.

Web Original

• The Shopkeep from RWBY.