COVID-19 Delays New Quechee General Store, to its benefit

The Quechee General Store in Quechee, Vt. Photo by Mattia Panciroli/Flickr.

New business owners always face challenges. But Angela Moore and Cindy Walker started the Quechee General Store in March 2020.

Among all the setbacks when starting a business, co-owners Angela Moore and Cindy Walker managed to find silver linings even during the pandemic.

“It ended up being a great time to do inventory, a time to get organized, widening the aisles, and do a lot of strategic planning and thinking about what we wanted to do with this wonderful business going forward,” Moore says. They bought the store and took advantage of the first months to set up the store and prepare to reopen during Covid. Because of the shutdown, they gained more time.

Cindy Walker and her husband Mark Walker own the Vermont Antique Mall in Quechee Gorge Village, just neighboring the General Store. They had been running the mall for about four years when they were approached by the Cabot company.

“Cabot came to us and said they wanted to reduce their retail footprint and they thought that the combination of the Vermont Antique Mall would be a wonderful fit in terms of having the same customer base and the same general name entrance to the mall,” Moore said.

Cabot proposed to combine the Antique Mall and the first independently owned Cabot tasting station that would be a feature of the new store. They renamed it the Quechee General Store.

Moore had a booth in the Antique Mall, and the Walkers had seen her talent and skill and wanted to work with her to start a new General Store. “We had an opportunity to take what was there, and take it to the next level.”

Moore and Walker took over their new business last March. Usually new business owners face a number of different challenges setting up their stores, but these owners had to think about having enough sanitization, preparing plexiglass screens, and the number of people allowed in the store due to social distancing along with everything else that comes with a new business.

The first couple months were spent getting the store reorganized, figuring out inventory, cleaning out the aisles, and the challenge of assessing what customers would want when they reopened. They really had to lean on each other through the stress of early quarantine.

“Part of the challenge,” Moore said, “was knowing what to buy for customers.”

They didn’t know their customers, let alone what they would want amidst Covid. Moore and Walker had to take a gamble by buying inventory that was possibly not going to sell. The unknowns were a huge struggle in navigating the new business. “Restocking, the cheese business, the number of customers,” Walker says, “these unknowns were big challenges.” Many aspects about the business--vendors, the shipping, inventory--everything that would have been normal was not normal.

“It’s hard to explain when you just find someone who knows your strengths, understands your weaknesses, and you just mesh,” says Walker, referring to her co-owner Moore.

Quechee General Store safely reopened in June with a small amount of inventory, keeping in mind the possibility of having to shut down again.

Moore and Walker had to get creative with getting the word out and bringing customers in — such as putting together goodie bags for customers, or shipping out inventory to people who weren’t shopping in person — but to their benefit, both of them had many connections through the community.

Customer Ann Quasman knew Moore prior to opening the General Store and she started going there in November. “I feel like anybody who’s opening a store in the middle of Covid has a million strikes against them already so I went in to support them.”

She needed to get Christmas presents, and wanted to make small gift bags with Vermont goodies to send to some of her out-of-state loved ones.

“I wanted to put together baskets of Vermont goodies. She was so great at helping me put it together and get it shipped off and everybody loved everything we sent them,” Quasman said. “I just thought they’re offering such a great resource that when somebody goes above and beyond to help you put it altogether, it makes a big difference.”