Vermont's Country Stores Organize to Face Threats

BRIDGEWATER CORNERS, Vt. - With its ample selection of Australian wines and shelves filled with DVD's and garlic-flavored pita chips, the country store in this tiny south-central Vermont town might appear to have come a long way since it opened in 1839.

But its creaky wood-plank floor, its wall of 19th-century mailboxes cater-cornered to a jar of Marshmallow Fluff and the proudly displayed town hunting ledger suggest that it has not really changed much.

Independent country stores like this one, the Bridgewater Corners Country Store, where customers are urged to sit outside at the wooden tables with a cup of coffee from a bottomless urn and where regulars run tabs, have long been a Vermont way of life. Now, threatened by the minimarts and large grocery chains that have driven some of them out of business in recent years, they have been banding together to help protect themselves.

Of the 100 independent country stores in the state, 55 have become members of the Vermont Alliance of Independent Country Stores. The organization, founded about two years ago, serves primarily as a support network, a sounding board and a marketing tool for owners. It promotes both the vitality and the history of the stores, limiting membership to those built before 1927, when the Winooski River flooded, decimating the state and killing 88 people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/national/28vermont.html?oref=login

and form cooperatives in their local areas, and network with other co-ops.

It's the only way they're going to have the muscle to remain competitive from both a marketing standpoint, and from a city hall standpoint.

in large numbers, if possible--then they can be more effective in lobbying their state capitol when their elected reps see a large voting block of concerned citizens. They should also concentrate on making sure that those who do patronize their stores are educated on the plight of the small 'mom and pop' business owner and how the customers are the ones who will eventually lose their 'small town' way of life, their tax base, etc if they continue to allow supergreeds to seduce lawmakers into allowing the zoning and tax laws to be changed to set up unfair advantages for the supergreeds and against those who've had roots in the community for longer than 25 years.

What a great idea!

Indeed the bluest of the blue. Do you think it's a coincidence that Vermont is the ONLY state that never had slavery, even for a single day? Because I don't think so...

never had slavery either

Vermont was the only one of the original 13. :)

Delaware (December 7, 1787), Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island (May 29, 1790). Vermont was the fourteenth state, joining on March 4, 1791.

Source: 1998 "Information Please Almanac"

Let me know if I made any typos.

Thanks for pointing that out. :)

don't worry about it.

my body just can tolerate the cold, or i would have been their years ago.

Oh to have been governed be Dean....

and I loved him. I was a Dean supporter till I heard about Wes Clark.
Then put all my efforts into trying to get him drafted. Thank God we succeeded. Now the world knows about him. :)

I love Vermont! We live in the heart of the Green MTS in Southern VT.
Skiing galore!

Blue blue blue.
Wahooooo!

Proud to use paper ballots.
Proud to hand count.

Bravo Vermont!

at the Vermont Country store next week : ) It will require a drive up from MA but is well worth it and will raise my spirits that have been lagging since the election.