ENFIELD — Mascoma Valley’s “food desert” is finally bearing fruit.
It’s also bearing vegetables, meats, poultry, food pantry items, craft beer galore, to-go meals and hickory-smoked marrow-filled dog bones.
While the Mascoma Valley may not yet be ready to declare itself the breadbasket of the Upper Valley, people who live and commute along the 25-mile stretch on Route 4 from Exit 17 on Interstate 89 to Danbury, N.H., are beginning to see their food shopping needs met.
The question now becomes, with four markets all within in a few miles of each other, including a well-capitalized nearly 9,000-square-foot Jake’s Market & Deli that opened earlier this month, whether they all will be able to sustain themselves.
For decades, Mascoma Valley was known as a no-man’s-land for grocery shopping. The nearest supermarkets are often a 30- to 40-minute drives away to West Lebanon to the west, Claremont to the south or Plymouth, N.H., to the east. Efforts to woo a supermarket or co-op to the region have been attempted several times.
In 2013, a group of local citizens organized the Mascoma Food Co-op to find a way to bring a market offering fresh food at affordable prices to the area. That was followed by a feasibility study a couple years later that determined there was demand for a small grocery store in Enfield or Canaan, although it was unlikely a larger store could compete with the supermarkets in West Lebanon or Claremont.
Slowly, things are changing. New owners at George’s AG Super Value market in Enfield Village and Proctor’s General Store in Enfield Center have made a concerted effort to stock a wider selection of grocery items on their shelves. A new fresh produce market adjacent to the PetroMart on Route 4 in Enfield attracts customers from as far away as Hanover and White River Junction.
And the Mascoma Valley got a boost earlier this month when the Lebanon-based convenience store chain Jake’s Market & Deli opened a new store on Route 4 near the heart of Enfield Village. Unlike most of the other Jake’s stores, the Enfield Village location is a full-fledged market. In addition to typical convenience store basics, it sells such shopping list items as fresh vegetables, fruits, on-site cut meats, gourmet bread and a wide variety of grocery and packaged staples.
It’s even installing a True Value hardware department and a “premium” pet food section.
“We call it a ‘small format’ grocery and convenience store,” said Bruce Bergeron, owner of the Jake’s chain, showing off the new market last week to a visitor, occasionally stopping to pick up a stray label or piece of tape that caught his eye on the shiny floor.
Bergeron said there has been an acute need for a market in the Mascoma Valley corridor so that “there would no reason for people to go to West Lebanon” to do their shopping.
Nearly 9,000 vehicles pass the intersection of Route 4 and Main Street every day, making the Enfield Village location the second most-heavily trafficked after the Jake’s Mechanic Street store in Lebanon. In the works since 2017, the site combines two separate real estate parcels that Bergeron acquired for about $600,000 and which were formerly the site of Enfield Hardware and Supply and Tinkham’s Store.
“The big chains, which want $1 million a week in sales, would never consider doing something like this,” Bergeron said. But he said Jake’s learned when its Quechee market, which opened a few years ago, how to serve communities that are 25 minutes from the nearest traditional supermarket.
Bergeron said the construction of the 7,800-square-foot structure, which includes a sit-down cafe, commercial kitchen, a drive-thru window, separately controlled walk-in coolers for vegetables and meats, and a walk-in freezer, cost “multiple seven figures” to build.
The Enfield Village location, Bergeron said, “has been on our radar for 25 years,” going back to when Jake’s founder and former owner Ed Kerrigan and Bergeron worked together at the fuel supply company Johnson & Dix and sold gas to Tinkham’s Store. “It was just the timing never worked out.”
The arrival of the spanking-new Jake’s might appear to signal trouble for Enfield’s other two mainstay general stores, George’s AG Super Value and Proctor’s General Store, but both establishments have been trying to expand under new owners.
Proctor’s was sold by longtime owners Janet and Jim Proctor in 2017 to Emily and Bill Henry, and George’s AG Super Value was sold in 2018 to brothers Max and Devendra Patel by the family of George Loupis, who acquired the store in 1957.
Since they bought the store 15 months ago, the Patel brothers — whose cousin Jay Patel bought Grazi’s Newport Meat Market in Newport later that same year — have reintroduced the deli counter, installed new shelving and lighting throughout the store and built a new register counter. They are also stocking more organic and low-sodium products, which general stores traditionally have not been known for carrying.
“We listened to the customers and deliver what they wanted,” said Max Patel, who with his brother also own general stores in Atkinson, N.H., and Dover, N.H. Customer feedback also led them to reopen the deli that serves “top-notch grinders” and homemade pizza.
Patel said he is not overly concerned that the new Jake’s will siphon away customers.
“The talk I get is it’s going to be a different clientele,” he said. “I may not have the latest gadgets, but the loyal customers don’t want to see this place gone. As far as I hear, they are going to stay with me.”
Indeed, Shelley Reeder, 47, who grew up in Enfield and remembers going to Tinkham’s “every day to buy penny candy and pickles” when she was little, said she doesn’t plan on changing her habits.
“I will still do my grocery shopping at George’s,” she said. “They’re cheaper.”
She said she likes their weekly specials and called the improvements under the new owners “amazing.”
Five miles away at Proctor’s General Store, new owner Bill Henry said he and his wife have expanded the wine selection and super-sized the craft beer selection — “I couldn’t give you an exact number, but it’s over 100 different kinds” — and have introduced smoked baby back ribs, pulled pork and a line of smoked marrow-filled bones for dogs.
“Dogs love them. We’ve been having a hard time keeping them in stock,” Henry said.
Henry said he doesn’t know what impact the new Jake’s store will have on his business, but he’s not particularly worried about it, based on Proctor’s General Store’s roots — the store dates back to 1889 — and reputation in the community.
“Our local population out this way supports us,” Henry said, noting there is not another general store for the next 18 miles until “you hit a Circle K” at the end of Route 4A near Andover, N.H. “We’re all sort of doing our own thing,” Henry said of the various stores. “There’s enough slices of the pie to go around for everyone.”
The “own thing” could perhaps best be applied to Joey Pellegrino, owner of Pellegrino’s market on Route 4 in Enfield, only 1 mile east of the new Jake’s. The market opened last summer selling plants, then expanded into fresh produce and next plans to begin selling locally raised meat and poultry.
Pellegrino, who once owned T & J’s Italian Deli & Cafe in Hanover before moving to Florida and returning to the Upper Valley last year, said the idea for the produce market came from his daughter, who lives in Canaan and said the area needed fresh vegetables after organic grower Blue Ox Farm in Enfield Center closed last year.
“There was nothing here for fresh produce; everyone had to go to West Lebanon to get it,” Pellegrino said. He drives down to the wholesale market at the New England Produce Center in Chelsea, Mass., to source his produce but said he is leasing 5 acres this summer where he plans to grow corn, peas, green beans and pumpkins. He sold 50,000 pounds of pumpkins last fall.
Pellegrino said he initially drew customers from Enfield, Canaan and Grafton but is now seeing customers from as far away as Hanover, Lebanon and White River Junction because he prices his produce below that sold at other markets.
“I thought my sales would go down this winter but then Stern’s (in White River Junction) closed and instead my numbers went up,” said Pellegrino, who likened his market to “the Co-op but only half the price.”
(Mother and daughter Jill and Amanda Metivier announced last month that they had bought the shuttered Stern’s and plan to reopen the business in the coming weeks.)
Pellegrino said he doesn’t see the opening of Jake’s as a threat to his business.
“They are a convenience store,” he said. “They have a little produce department and it’s probably going to shrink even more.”
With the number of places to buy groceries in Mascoma Valley now double what it was a year ago, can they all be sustained?
Enfield Town Manager Ryan Aylesworth said, given Enfield’s population of 4,500 and Canaan’s population of 3,900 — not including the seasonal influx of Mascoma Lake and Crystal Lake residents — there are enough people in the area to sustain four different markets.
“I definitely believe our population and visitorship can support each of those businesses. I don’t think four is too many,” he said.
Instead, Aylesworth said, “the key is going to be to reorient people’s thinking. They are in the habit of going to West Lebanon” for the food shopping. Now, he pointed out, there’s less need for that.
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
