At the top of a winding road in rural Vermont sits Pierce’s Store, a white-clapboard general store with a wide front porch and a steeply pitched roof. By most measures, this place should have closed long ago.
But on a recent chilly November morning, a step through Pierce’s front door, beneath the jingle of a bell, and into the warm scent of freshly baked goods, feels like a hug.
These spaces are more than just the picturesque backdrops of Hallmark Christmas movies. Along the backroads of Vermont, a general store serves as a lifeline to residents, circulating mail, local wealth, and goods. But with the rise of Amazon and chain stores, the deck is stacked against them.
Why We Wrote This
They evoke Hallmark movies and simpler times. But in rural locations, general stores are a lifeline to the community, providing access to groceries and serving as a social hub. In Vermont, towns are fighting to keep theirs alive.
There are about 70 independently run stores left in the state, says Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, a Vermont historian and author of “Country Stores of Vermont: A History and Guide.” That’s a drop from about 125 in 2001. And yet, a small but sturdy number of towns are rising to the challenge of keeping their doors open under the nonprofit model by fundraising, volunteering, and hosting potluck dinners and music jams.
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“When somebody’s saving something in their community for their neighbors, it brings them joy, and it is hopeful. I hear that all the time,” says Ben Doyle, president of the Preservation Trust of Vermont in Montpelier, the state’s capital.
At Pierce’s, Lee Wilson is finishing off a breakfast sandwich at a small table in the back room. He’s been coming here for 48 years and now volunteers for shifts behind its counters. Mark Youngstrom is here, too, swathed in an Icelandic wool sweater. He’s been coming for 46 years. Martha Sirjane, the assistant manager, is also here, attentively swooping between shelves stocked with essentials and specialty items, chatting with visitors, ringing up orders, and in some cases introducing neighbors for the first time.
The store’s last owner, Marjorie Pierce, wanted to preserve this feeling of warmth for her small town of 1,100. Shrewsbury’s general store first opened the year the Civil War ended, not just as a place to pick up flour or sugar, but also as a gathering spot where neighbors played checkers next to a potbellied stove, got the latest news, and warded off the isolation of rural life. When she died in 2001, she left her family’s store to the Preservation Trust of Vermont, a nonprofit organization that provides support and funding for towns seeking to save buildings that define a sense of place. She gave specific instructions that Pierce’s remain a working store, not a museum of times past.
It was an ambitious request. And it took 16 years and the commitment of a couple dozen residents to be fully realized. But today, the Shrewsbury Cooperative at Pierce’s Store owns and runs the property, with the help of volunteers and a few paid staff.
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“The ambiance of this place and Marjorie’s desire that the store continue to serve the community in as many ways as it could is just really important,” says Mr. Youngstrom, who is a board member. He adds that in the years since they reopened in 2009, they’ve devised new ways to draw people in, such as chili cook-offs, movie nights, a blueberry festival, and a children’s art exhibit in a converted garage out back. Their efforts have also become a source of inspiration for other towns that want to protect their general stores.
“The last great egalitarian space”
Even before the pandemic and rising energy and grocery costs put the squeeze on Vermont’s general stores, their numbers were dropping as longtime owners looked to retire. Aging buildings, long workdays, and narrow profit margins led many to seek new proprietors, resulting in some closing their doors after decades of serving their communities.
“We’re seeing closures of independently owned stores as a result of an economy that doesn’t work for rural communities,” says Mr. Doyle. The Preservation Trust of Vermont has assisted approximately 10 towns in establishing nonprofits to operate general stores. “[They] are the last great egalitarian space in our country,” he says. “They are places where people, regardless of class, regardless of political point of view, can have accidental encounters with one another that are really important to building community trust.”
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Not long after Robert DuGrenier and his wife, Kathy, decided to move to Vermont from New York City in 1997 to realize their dreams of operating a farm, the West Townshend Country Store closed down.
“This was a ghost town. There was nothing to slow down for,” says Mr. DuGrenier, a world-renowned glassblower who was once asked to figure out how to restore the flame on the Statue of Liberty. The property changed hands a couple of times: first as a catering hub, then as a ski shop. However, when the last owner decided to sell in 2010, the town realized it was about to lose its post office. Working with the Preservation Trust of Vermont, they found an angel investor who said that if the town formed a nonprofit, they would purchase the building and lease it back for $5 a month.
The West River Community Project, staffed largely by volunteers, now operates a donation-based café, a thrift shop, an incubator kitchen, and, of course, the post office. Mr. DuGrenier is the postmaster. He’s also the wood-fired pizza chef on Friday nights, turning out a pie every 90 seconds, and the president of the nonprofit’s board. Music jams happen several times a week, and Tuesdays are a community dinner. In the summertime, a farmers market fills the backyard.
“A lot of other communities around saw what we were doing and said, ‘We need to follow your model. How did you do this? How have you survived?’” says Mr. DuGrenier. “We’ve really made a difference.”
A community pitches in
In South Strafford, Vermont, the family-owned and -operated Coburns’ General Store has served as a hub for groceries, a laundromat, a gas station, a post office, and a bank since 1977. It’s also the place where a shy local boy bought his candy. Then Noah Kahan grew up to write and sing about life in rural Vermont. But when Melvin Coburn and his wife, Sue, were ready to retire after nearly 48 years, the only serious buyer wanted to turn it into a convenience store. The community rallied and established the Strafford Community Trust in 2022, with the assistance of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, raising $1.8 million. They used $1.2 million to buy Coburns’ in June 2025, and the remainder will be used for improvements under the direction of the new manager, Adam Smith, who leases the store from the trust.
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There may be a new name over the door, Strafford General Store, but the bulletin board outside still advertises contra dances, dog walking, house cleaning, food pantries, and a new women’s empowerment group. Inside, along with shelves of groceries and a growing selection of Vermont-made goods, are old-fashioned hurricane lamps, cedar shavings, Easter egg kits gathering dust, an assortment of fishing hooks, and Noah Kahan T-shirts.
Deanna Race, a local resident of Strafford who has worked at the store for 26 years, is hard-pressed to identify top sellers. “But 127 hooded Noah Kahan sweatshirts sold in two-to-three weeks,” she notes, adding that people come in every day hoping to catch a glimpse of the Grammy-nominated folk-pop singer.
Mr. Smith, just four months on the job, brings a wealth of experience as the former manager of a food co-op in a nearby town. His daily tasks include problem-solving a growing list: updating the coolers, redoing the register system, and setting up a new account to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, cards. He has hired an assistant manager and reduced his 80-hour workweeks, staying in close contact with the trust. He’s also taking care to make inventory changes slowly.
“The nice thing about small stores, each customer does really matter, and you develop connections with them,” says Mr. Smith, noting one customer turned on his heel and left when his favorite creamer wasn’t in stock. Most employees have stayed on through the transition. “The more you support these smaller independent stores, the more they can thrive and their employees will thrive,” he says.
“So much more than a grocery store”
In Shrewsbury, Harry DiPrinzio and Elena Gleed moved from California a year ago to operate Pierce’s as a team. They are using their bread-baking and restaurant experiences to expand the baked goods and prepared-food offerings. Locals say the store is the best it’s ever been. But it’s still a struggle.
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“Our goal as managers is to make it a sustainable business model as much as possible. And it’s really, really hard to do that,” says Ms. Gleed. “The cost of groceries is going up, the cost that we … [pay] our distributors, that is going up.”
Mr. DiPrinzio adds that it’s been a challenge to get some larger providers to deliver to Shrewsbury, although they maintain relationships with 30 to 40 individual suppliers. The recent growth of food hubs has made it easier to source more Vermont products, a priority for them. Infrastructure and food policy challenges aside, the managers are quick to acknowledge the value of the intangibles a general store offers.
“The heart of Pierce’s has been able to survive since 2009 because of volunteer community members,” says Ms. Gleed. “I’m sure there are other examples in other towns. But it’s just so much more than a grocery store. And I think without the town’s support, it would not have survived for so long.”
To Mr. Wilson, volunteering is one way of offering the sense of home he felt from the Pierces when he was new to small-town life almost five decades ago. “That’s one of the joys of working behind the counter,” he says. “I introduce myself to new people, and I say, ‘Well, welcome to Shrewsbury.’”
