A Saturday Huddle At The General Store
Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle. This is a new weekly column that will feature opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
A few days before Christmas I did some last-minute shopping near my house in uptown Saint John. I stopped into a general store called Goods, which sells a combination of food staples and a curated selection of general items. I bought a reading light made out of a clothespin, for example, and a kit to plant herbs on windowsills in wine bottles.
I also had a long chat with the owner, Susan Pass, who had run “Offline Board Game Café” in the same space, which she had closed months before because of the impacts of Covid-19. We talked about the joys and challenges of operating a small business, city life and our families. I tried kombucha for the first time, something she sold in the shop as well.
Huddle had published stories about the opening and eventual closure of Susan’s board game café uptown and the launch of Goods in its place.
Susan has been a lifelong entrepreneur, she told me in our conversation, going back to her childhood in small-town Newfoundland. She and her family lived beside their general store in Shoal Harbour. At an early age, she would help her parents, doing things like stocking shelves. Her sister made ice in the family kitchen and sold it to her mother and father wholesale to be resold in the general store, an early foray into entrepreneurship.
I thought of my chat with Susan this week as Huddle published more stories about the challenges faced by small businesses trying to navigate the “orange” and “red” phases of the province’s pandemic response plan. In a story by Inda Intiar, salon and gym owners shared their feelings of uncertainty as they closed, re-opened and closed again as their communities moved from one phase to another.
“The most challenging part is definitely the emotional rollercoaster. The up and down, and trying to stay strong as a team,” said Kristen Leffley, who owns and operates Neroli Salon & Spa in Riverview.
In Liam Floyd’s story this week about the challenges faced by Fredericton-area businesses, Zach Atkinson, owner of The Cap, says the post-holiday season is generally slow and made worse this year by pandemic, making it that much more important to support local businesses.
“It’s a challenging time for any bar, restaurant, any type of retail…to see success this time of year,” said Zach. “Then add the pandemic on it and it creates more barriers. So, when people are thinking about where they’re going to spend money, always consider local first.”
Zach, and entrepreneurs like him, aren’t suggesting that people shop, eat, drink, get a haircut and work out in their businesses just because they’re local. It’s about recognizing their true value and the way in which the successful ones are changing to suit a rapidly, and permanently changing consumer environment.
Early last year, I did a “Home Office” podcast interview with Judith Mackin, the owner of Tuck Studio in Saint John, who developed a robust online ordering and delivery service at the outset of the pandemic. She perfectly captured the spirit and strategy of confronting the global challenges faced by small businesses everywhere, pandemic or not.
“We had to figure out a way to beat Amazon, which was getting everyone’s business, with everyone at home on their computers,” Judith told me at the time. “We had to find a way to get the product into our clients’ hands faster and more efficiently, and that’s what we did. All of sudden, it was like, you could get this on Amazon and have it delivered maybe in four or five days because of Covid slowing things down, or you can have me drop it off at your doorstep tomorrow.”
But that doesn’t mean she shifted all of her focus online. Many successful local businesses are located in places we want to hang out in, operated by people we like and find interesting to be around.
Judith created a home furnishing shop in a condo space in a restored uptown heritage building that so impressed my nine-year-old daughter Ella, she declared that she liked it better than her own house and wanted to buy it and live there.
These local businesses are vital to our social, as well as commercial fabric.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Dave Forestell and Sherrie Boyd had sold Slocum & Ferris, an iconic Saint John City Market business around since 1895, to local entrepreneurs Corey Dugas and Joanna Killen.
In a Huddle story by Cherise Letson, Corey and Joanna say Dave offered to sell the business to them when Dugas reached out to ask when the restaurant would be reopening after closing near the beginning of the pandemic.
“My favourite item to buy in the market was always the Slocum steak sub,” said Corey in an interview with Huddle. “I like other places, but I’ve been missing it since March.”
Now he’s in full control of when that steak sub makes its return to the market.
I look forward to seeing the changes Joanna and Corey plan to make to modernize and preserve the traditions of a business that’s very much a Saint John institution. But I’m going to miss Dave, who had owned the business for 32 years and knew his customers well. A couple of times a week I’d stop by for a bag of samosas, and Dave and I would talk politics, trading gossip and insights.
Susan has created that same kind of feeling in her modern-day general store, Goods, a place where you can stop by not just to buy things, but also say hello and get her perspective on city life and things like the health benefits of kombucha.
It’s the kind of shopping experience you couldn’t have through an app.
Feedback on the “Saturday Huddle”? E-mail: [email protected].
Banner photo: “Goods” on Prince William Street in Saint John. Image: Mark Leger/Huddle.