Hanover
Longtime owners Marv and Mary Schouten have sold the Hanover kitchen supply store to Dave Barrette and Kaitlyn Sanders Barrette, a young couple who grew up in Hanover and Norwich, respectively, and recently returned to the Upper Valley after living and working in Florida for several years.
The Schoutens, as part of their retirement after operating Main Street Kitchens for 21 years, put the business up for sale last year. They found their buyers in the Barrettes, who recently took over the store and are slowly introducing new elements, such as tastings, cooking classes and specialty food products.
“Our goal is to marry the home cook with the professional cook in the Upper Valley,” said David Barrette. The 2005 graduate of Kimball Union Academy in Meriden studied culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University before becoming a chef at the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, a deluxe resort hotel at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla.
Kaitlyn Sanders Barrette previously worked as a litigation attorney in Orlando.
Barrette said that in addition to the regular kitchenware the store has stocked, it also will carry specialty foods such as craft oils and vinegar, local jams, jellies and honey, truffles and “20 different types of sea salt from the around the world.”
“I always wanted to move back and open my own restaurant. Those ambitions still remain, but for now, the hours (running Main Street Kitchens) are more forgiving than the food and beverage industry,” explained Barrette, who recently became a parent with the birth of his and Kaitlyn’s daughter, Zoey.
Barrette said they plan to introduce light food preparation classes in the fall, such as how to prepare a cheese or charcuterie platter or the proper skills in handling knives and other cooking tips.
Lisa Newcity, who worked at Main Street Kitchens for 10 years under the Schoutens and had a prior background in food service, has been named the store’s manager.
Kaitlyn Sanders Barrette is the daughter of Nick and Gail Sanders. Gail Sanders has been active in the Norwich Historical Society; Nick Sanders is retired from Hypertherm. Dave Barrette is the son of Ray and Cyn Barrette. Ray Barrette is the former chief executive of White Mountains Insurance Group in Hanover; Cyn Barrette has been active in fundraising for Northern Stage.
Patrons of Lyme bistro Stella’s Italian Kitchen & Market have been bemoaning the curtailment of hours at the popular lunch and dinner spot and became more concerned when the restaurant recently announced it has “temporarily closed” due to “staffing limitations.”
But Bob Coyne, who has operated Stella’s for the past 10 years with his wife, Denby Coyne, said he expects to reopen within the next few weeks as he takes a breather to reorganize the business and find employees to staff up in order to become “fully operational.”
Coyne said that balancing an understaffed restaurant while celebrating a family milestone school graduation and moving home led him to suspend operations briefly.
“My house was for sale for a year. It sold and then I had eight days to get out for the new owner,” he explained of the “personal” reason cited in the posted announcement about the restaurant’s closing.
Coyne said the low unemployment rate is making it difficult to find workers for Stella’s, a challenge also affecting other Upper Valley employers.
“The demand is there,” he said of customers, but not the “supply” of workers required to serve them.
Stacey Gerrish has opened a yoga and meditation retreat center on a 19th-century farm property in Woodstock that had been the residence of her late grandmother, sculptor Barbara Kaufman.
Leading Fields, as Gerrish has named the retreat on the newly renovated the 184-acre estate on North Bridgewater Road, had a “soft opening” on Friday to celebrate the Summer Solstice with daylong yoga and meditation sessions. Amanda Anderson, of Barnard’s Inner Lift Yoga, and Beth Pollari and Cheryl Hirschfeld, of The Zen Den in Newport, hosted the sessions.
Besides the daylong sessions, Leading Fields later this summer also will accommodate small groups of eight to 10 people for extended, overnight periods, Anderson said.
White River Junction’s Open Door Integrative Wellness on North Main Street has expanded and taken over the adjacent storefront formerly occupied by USA Karate.
The new space is home to Open Door’s “Movement Lab,” where movement, fitness and somatics sessions will be held, the wellness provider said in a news release.
The expansion includes a new massage room and space to introduce personal training as well as “aerial yoga,” which Open Door said will be available later this summer.
Physical therapist Kate Gamble founded the business in 2015 and now has 10 professionals practicing in the areas of counseling, acupuncture, massage, movement, personal training and mindfulness.
Art Keating, of Brownsville, is opening Vermont Home Inspection Services on July 9 to provide home inspection services to home buyers on the Vermont side of the Upper Valley.
Keating, a certified consultant with the American Society of Home Inspectors, previously worked as a consultant in the medical products industry and is former president of Ascutney Outdoors.
Keating said he plans to focus on the home inspection market within a 30- to 40-mile radius around Brownsville.
News items of interest to the local business community are published in the Business & Money section of the Sunday Valley News. Submissions may be sent by email to: biznotes@vnews.com (high-resolution photographs may be attached in .jpg format). Items are edited for clarity and space.
