The roadside produce and garden stand Pellegrino’s in Enfield has been an oasis in the Route 4 “food desert” between Lebanon and Grafton, selling fresh vegetables, fruits and specialty Amish jams and mustards, as well as serving up homemade meatball and provolone cheese calzones and other Italian deli delights.
Now, that oasis is drying up.
After operating for just three years, wife-and-husband owners Cheryl and Joey Pellegrino are closing their business at the end of October.
The reason is familiar to anyone who has struggled to operate a consumer-facing business during the COVID-19 pandemic: inability to find workers.
“We need four to five people to stock this place,” said Cheryl Pellegrino last week as she took a phone call while ringing out customers. “We’ve been working at this store by ourselves for a year.”
Pellegrino said she and her husband have each been working more than 100 hours a week to keep things up and running — Joey Pellegrino regularly leaves at 2:30 a.m. to drive the truck to a wholesale market in Boston and then puts in a full day at the store — and it has become exhausting.
The Pellegrinos had put the business — formally named Pellegrino’s Farmers Market & Italian Deli — up for sale, with an asking price of $300,000, according to a listing on bizbuysell.com earlier this year, with an eye toward retiring, Cheryl Pellegrino said at the time.
Joey Pellegrino previously owned T & J’s Italian Deli & Cafe in Hanover before moving to Florida and returning to the Upper Valley in 2018. He initially opened the market in the same building where the former Enfield Movie Mart video store was located before moving to the present location adjacent to the former Petro Mart on Route 4.
As for what’s next, Cheryl Pellegrino said she and her husband are “headed someplace warm to retire.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
