This story by John Lippman was first published in the Valley News on Oct. 3
BRADFORD — Since Marilyn Rainville took over running the Bliss Village Store and Deli in the summer of 2022, she’s watched as four other small businesses along Bradford’s Main Street have, one by one, closed up shop.
The cheese store, a boutique, a coffee shop and a thrift store, Rainville ticked off as she worked the cash register at the counter of her store on Tuesday afternoon, as customers came in to buy snacks, cigarettes and lottery tickets.
“We’re number five and there’s a six and a seven that are talking about it,” Rainville said.
This past Sunday, Rainville posted on social media that 27 months after she and her son acquired the Bliss Village Store and Deli from longtime owner Mark Johnson, the market and sandwich shop will close on Oct. 15, the latest in a roll call of general stores to close in the Upper Valley over the past decade.
The store — a quick stop to grab breakfast, lunch and dinner for generations — has been a favorite among staff at Colatina Exit, a restaurant next door. They often pop in for an energy drink or something quick after work, as do kids from The Hub youth center a couple doors down. But that’s not enough.
“We tried, but couldn’t make it work any longer,” said Rainville, who has lived in one of the apartments in the Bliss Hotel building above the store and now plans to return back West from where she joined her son, Chris Petrossian-Rainville, when he bought the Bliss Village Store. He had first seen the 218-year-old historic Greek Revival building listed for sale on a business broker’s website.
Rainville said her son, who had made some money investing, wanted to venture the profits in another business. But two months after they closed on buying the store and property, her son, who is in the military, was deployed overseas.
So Rainville has been single-handedly running the store ever since, logging 60-plus hours a week. (The days are long, 6:00 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 7:00 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends).
Once as ubiquitous a feature of small town New England life as white clapboard churches and village greens, scores of independent general stores — the exact tally is difficult to gauge but before the onset of the pandemic in 2020 the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association pegged the number of “traditional” village stores at between 70 and 75 — have been steamrolled by gas station convenience store chains and dollar stores.
In August, Erin’s General Store, the former B & B Cash Market in West Fairlee, closed after reopening in 2020 under a new owner. Upper Valley towns that have lost general stores in recent years include Thetford Center, Cornish, Grafton, Canaan Village, Brownsville, Taftsville and Quechee, among others.
Rainville, a former manager with the Pilot/Flying J Truck Stop chain of highway fuel stations and convenience stores, said that in the first six months of running Bliss Village Store “business was good.” She inherited the staff who worked under previous owners, three of whom had decades of experience in the store and could handle a variety of tasks.
But the three veteran employees all retired over the next 18 months and Rainville said finding and retaining reliable employees has become difficult, meaning she has barely been able to take more than a spare day off in more than two years.
A staff that was 22 mostly part-time workers when she arrived is now down to 14.
Meanwhile, she said, “insurance doubled and the my utility bills are 25 percent more and foot traffic is 35 percent less,” she said. Electricity costs have gone up so much that in the summer of 2023, Rainville said, she had to unplug the soft-serve machine and scoop only hard ice cream.
Then the store had a run of bad luck. A frozen pipe burst in February, 2023, flooding the store and causing it to close for repairs. The entire winter of 2023 was a disappointment, as the unseasonably warm weather reduced the influx of skiers, usually a reliable source of business.
“Nobody was coming in that winter,” she said.
But even apart from the odd offseason, the fundamentals of the small store business no longer add up, according to Rainville.
“Village stores are really not sustainable any longer,” Rainville said.
Although Bliss Village Store’s primary business is the deli counter, refrigerated beverages and beer, its location on Bradford’s Main Street has made it a convenient place to pop in and grab a quick bite and coffee.
Vin Wendell, who owns the Colatina Exit restaurant and who grew up in Bradford, has been going to the store since he was young. His father owned the five and dime store in town and would send him up the street to Bliss Village Store “mostly for cigarettes.”
“I was just a little kid but back then everyone knew everyone and they knew who it was for,” Wendell remembered, laughing at how ridiculous that would be today.
Because the restaurant is located next door to the village store, Wendell said people picking up take-out orders from Colatina would also duck into Bliss Village Store to purchase wine or beer to go with their meal.
“We complimented each other,” Wendell said.
On Tuesday, Quinn Treadgold came into Bliss Village Store toting his 13-month-old daughter Eloise in a baby carrier after learning on social media the store would be closing. “I thought I’d help them clear out the shelves,” he said.
Treadgold, who works from home in Fairlee several days a week as a building envelope testing manager, said he usually would head for Bliss Village Store “about three times a month” for lunch and always ordered his favorite, the Main Street Sub — ham, turkey, bacon, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing and cole slaw — which, at $9.25 for a small and $11.75 for a large, Treadgold called “very fairly priced.”
Most important, he added, “I’m never hungry afterwards.”
Also in the store for a final visit on Tuesday was Scott Fitts, of North Haverhill, a retired steamfitter at Dartmouth College who said he made a habit of stopping at Bliss Village Store “every morning for 20 years” to get a coffee and a doughnut on his drive into work in Hanover.
“I had to check it out one more time,” Fitts said, waiting in line with a container of cole slaw.
Rainville said her son plans to continue owning the building, and they are talking with people who are interested in leasing the space, possibly as a general store, cafe or a Mexican restaurant. One person wanted to renovate the vacant apartments upstairs and turn them into short-term rentals.
Rainville doesn’t know which possibility will pan out, although she said she is telling prospective lessees what is important to her.
“I got my Colatina people and I got my Hub kids. Those are the big ones that come in here all day long,” she said. “I just hope that no matter who comes in here can take care of them.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Bradford village store to close.