The lights are on, and the door is open again at the Hancock Market, after a pause of several weeks for improvements by the new owners.
Everything has benefited from a bit of paint and polish; coolers have been refurbished and shifted around, and the checkout counter is now a long sideboard of dark, sturdy antique wood with an at-home country aesthetic. The quality of the merchandise is responsive to the expected preferences of the community it serves, including New England meat products such as Boyden Beef and North Country Smokehouse, some local produce, regional dairy and specialty salted snacks, the sort of snacks you would expect to find in any local store, minus the butylated hydroxytoluene.
The market has been reborn into partnership with its neighbor, the Fiddleheads Café, thanks to the actions of Rob Sokol and the investment in both by Eleanor Briggs. Samantha Rule, who has been chef and manager of Fiddleheads for the past two years, will add the market to her management responsibilities, assisted by Robyn LeBlanc, who will handle the store’s day-to-day operations.
If it sounds like a potentially sturdy business combination, it is. Hancock is lucky. The ability of each storefront to support the other will give them more chances to win by sharing resources and delighting customers. The third leg of the stool is the Inn at Hancock across the street, owned by 33 Main Street LLC, which will feed them business from the ranks of their guests, as it benefits in return from the elevated experience the local market and café will give back to the guests.
Visitors will go home having had the New England country experience they hoped and paid for – paid all of us for, I stress, who struggle to find ways to keep our local businesses afloat apart from the efforts of the owners and operators to make ends meet, and the occasional largesse of citizens who swoop in to keep them from going over the edge.
Maybe I should disclose that I have insider experience with respect to running small, rural, New Hampshire businesses, having owned, with my wife, both the inn and the market. For years, we lost money at the inn. Two reasons — first, we really did not know what we were doing. Second (see also the first reason), we chose, on our own, to prioritize making the inn a center of hospitality for the community.
For example, right away, by popular demand, we restored a tavern menu featuring burgers and fish and chips and other affordable (key word) staples of any country bistro. This had to be in addition to the fine-dining portion of the menu appealing to the overnight guests, and to those who relied on the inn for special occasions; for instance, the ones who would tell us, proudly, “We’re here every year for Grandmother’s birthday.” Every year. Once. (Understand that you have a chance to be successful attracting each guest once a year in the big city, not in rural New Hampshire.)
To accommodate the expanded menu offering, we added kitchen staff and servers. We built it, and the community came. Except, there were not enough of them, which is ultimately the problem. A simple problem, easy to identify, hard, hard, hard to overcome except by casting things overboard. Many would say, “Skip it.”
But who wants that? Who, here, in a place many regard as the last piece of authentic New England, wants that? Because what is authentic New England without its local businesses, its iconic markets and inns, ragged as some of them may be today for want of a highway, or airport – and who wants those?
Hancock is lucky. And I wish all the new owners, as the pieces come together, good luck. I am rooting for you, and the towns nearby that might see any boost in trade. Bring the people. Have them leave and tell their friends; have them come back. They can have my parking place. I’ll park behind the Meetinghouse – another treasure – so long as I can shop local, avoiding the butylated hydroxytoluene someone added far away.
Jarvis Coffin writes fiction and essays on rural life. He is a retired media and advertising sales executive, and former chef/owner, with his wife, of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, the Hancock Inn. Reach him at huntspond@icloud.com, and keep up with all his musings at jarviscoffin.com.