Little Gardens Grow Where the Empire Doesn’t
Commentary by Edd Merritt,
December 2, 2010, page 21.....

A couple of weeks ago I popped in to the Little Garden Market located off Route 7 on Ferry Road to deliver papers and pick up lunch. My conversation with owner Rick Benson, soon generated thoughts about this notion of “localvore” and how it is created. It has become a buzzword for things local that could easily deteriorate into a cliché for whatever one is selling. However, the more I listened to Rick talk about the growth of his store, the more I began to understand how a commercial venture like this feeds back and forth, into and out of the local agricultural scene. Localvore through a local store.
Let’s take the Little Garden as an example.

How did it sprout in Charlotte?
I knew Rick had graduated from Purdue University in Indiana, the engineering capital of the Big Ten, and I was curious how a Boilermaker became a baker. He grew up in small-town New Hampshire and at age 12 worked at a general store. After college he did what many recent grads do, he moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and found himself in the employ of a high-end caterer, serving, among others, Ray Kroc – owner of McDonalds – at the Kroc’s beach house. He also worked on a number of state contracts, and he learned the catering trade quickly.
Again, as many New Englanders discover, after testing Florida’s waters and finding them a bit too warm and salty, he returned to the northeast to open a restaurant on the Burlington waterfront called Taste. The New York Times reported that Taste was one of several notable restaurants that helped revitalize the waterfront, and USA Today recognized his focus on foods prepared from local sources, awarding him the “Vermont Dish of the Year for 2007.”
With these two accolades in hand plus recognition that Taste’s clientele tended to be seasonal, Rick looked for something with a greater year-around flavor. He talked with Josie Levitt, found her Flying Pig location to his liking for a market, including a delicatessen for food offerings and a center for his catering business. It was a starting point but a challenge as well.
This latter attribute contained at least two elements: 1) how to grow the market successfully and 2) how to use community input to do that.
Challenges such as these are not uncommon to small-town businesses of any sort. I confront them every morning when I pick up my paper at Spears Store; it happens between car and post office en route to collecting the mail; major news stories grow out of Wednesday noon dishwashing at the Senior Center.
What we’re doing in our everyday settings – or with shelves of oils or bowls of pasta in Rick’s case – simply opens the door to people’s minds, which is the interesting part of the venture.
Rick Benson showed and explained to me how he gives human interplay a major role in building his market business.
He said he recently counted the number of different products he carries in the store. They totaled 1,300 – a figure of surprising magnitude. Thinking about how this growth occurred, he realized that much of it came through interchange with customers. Plumbers wanted long matches to light burners tucked in water heaters. If they don’t mind Santa Claus on the matchbox, Rick now carries them. Campers stopped for ponchos. Rick now has a supply of ponchos. Children’s items drew a call. There are now toys across the aisle from wines and on the shelves near the shaving creams. Local wines, beers, Vermont granolas, and Dave and Jane Allen’s maple syrups provide a surprising variety created locally.
He says that he tries to offer as much as he can in a small space, and this requires listening closely to customers’ needs. Despite the constant stocking, there remains room for more.
Being personable and responsive builds the trade. It is that closeness with individual customers that Rick enjoys. He also finds that he can act quickly to fulfill a person’s request, and that often the deli section with its sandwiches and food offerings complements the shelved items elsewhere in the store. He also gets ideas for new sandwiches, soups and salads while someone is placing an order. This cook and customer conversation is often hard to find in larger venues. He has discovered that a growing number of families are ordering complete dinners to pick up and take home – a trend that helps stock the shelves.
The feel of community is palpable in stores like this. It should not be lost as our town grows, and it cannot, to my mind, be replaced by latte titles that are geared to give coffee little more than a distinctive label.
We tend to be foodies this time of year. Flavored with a pinch of good humor and a dab of congeniality, that pulled pork can tickle your soul as well as your gullet. The Grinch may have stolen Christmas, but he certainly left me with an appetite.