The Deli is Open!!
Our brand new Cafe and Deli is light and spacious, making it easy to relax with a book and your favorite sandwich or shop the prepared foods coolers!
It’s here!
Quietly on Christmas Eve, we opened our brand new gorgeous Deli and Cafe area replete with a full kitchen and new bakery and coffee area. The Staff and community instantly fell in love with the new spacious feel and ease of shopping, plethora of new products, and sunny, comfortable seating area.
The new touches in lighting, tables and deli cases have made such an enormous difference in the feel of our cozy little store; keeping everything that made it so special and welcoming and enhancing what our customers needed more of.
Our General Manager and Board of Directors took into careful consideration the feedback we had received over our many years as a community pillar and took action; creating more space without losing the energy that makes our store so unique and inviting, implementing modern wide bright windows and lofted ceilings while still maintaining our heritage and Vermont feel.
Our talented cook Jason prepares a salad in our much bigger and better new kitchen space!
Our seating area and Sandwich Board weren’t the only places to receive renovation: the focus was also hugely on expanding and updating the formerly tiny and cramped kitchen area, giving our talented employees the appropriate room and tools to work as hard as they do. With all new equipment our Staff has been able to produce more than ever of the timeless favorites for our little community.
Roberto packaging some local cheeses!
We also installed a brand new Hot Bar and Salad Bar with greatly improved ease of access and the capability to hold more food. The soup well came off of the Hot Bar and found it’s own space at the entrance of the Deli, featuring fresh and delicious soups every morning.
We gained a brand new production area for our beloved Staff member Roberto who curates and prepares all of our meat and cheese offerings, and also increased the volume of space available in the former Deli case to hold new meat and cheese offerings, including more vegan and specialty diet items.
We also added to the Staff two wonderful full-time bakers, Deb and Kevin. Kevin joined us from the much cherished former Common Ground in Brattleboro and both he and Deb immediately got to hard work creating a vast bevy of new pastries, muffins, croissants, cakes and pies, focaccia and Kevin’s much coveted cardamom knots! We are all very excited to have them aboard and our customers have responded with enthusiasm to all of the new offerings and the new Bakery case which was installed near our coffee bar.
Kevin prepares some lemony treats in the new baking room!
Chocolate filled croissants wait in the sunny bakery case for customers to come snatch them up!
Thick slices of fresh carrot cake sits in the brand new Deli cold-case
A fully stocked bakery case greets our customers every morning and throughout the day!
A banana bundt cake fresh from the oven
One of Deb’s newly famous chocolate eclairs
One of the most exciting parts for us and our customers was the beautiful new Cafe and dining space! With around 30 new seats, beautiful new tables and chairs and seating bar in front of the wide windows, the new dining space can hold traveling families or local customers working on their laptops with a cup of coffee with style and ease.
The new Cafe space also features two brand new bathrooms, one of which is also handicapped accessible, in addition to our two older restrooms.
Whether it’s customers out to dinner for Thursday nights Burger Night or just relaxing with some tea and a good book during a quieter afternoon, the new Cafe space is welcoming and comfortable with plenty of room to accommodate all customers needs.
Our Cafe space is also enjoying the curation of community member and preparatory for the Brattleboro Museum, Tim Allen who will select local artists paintings, ceramics and more to decorate and further enhance the space.
During a lunchtime rush, customers spread out and enjoy the new seating area
Staff and Board member Yitz mans our new Deli register
We were also very excited to have installed a fourth register solely for the Deli and Cafe, making it easier than ever to purchase Hot Bar and Deli items or order a sandwich or espresso beverage! The Deli register is open during most rush hours such as lunch or dinner and makes it quick and simple to grab a plate of delicious food and head right into the cafe to relax and enjoy.
The cafe space when it first opened, featuring soft lighting and big sunny windows
Another welcome addition has been a new corner for coffees, the bakery, hot teas and a beverage cooler adjacent to the registers. It used to be quite a fight to get a cup of coffee in the cramped Hot Bar and Deli counter space but the new area is breathable and inviting, making it easy to come and go for seconds or thirds, some of Kevins fresh baked bread loaves or a Kombucha from the cooler.
The Deli wasn’t the only space to receive some love and renovation; the influence of the gorgeous new kitchen and cafe spread through the rest of the store and Produce also received some brand new dry goods tables instead of the cabinets we had used for a long time.
The new look makes it very easy to circle around the onions and avocados, make selections and peruse the many wonderful seasonal offerings while also freeing up the space for ease of access and making the entire area much more airy and visible.
We were so thankful to have Josh Crone from NCG fly all the way from North Carolina to help our Produce Manager John and Staff member Kelty install the new tables and get everything into it’s most abundant and beautiful place.
Josh and John worked hard to get the configuration of the tables just right!
The new coolers and opening up of space also provided an opportunity for Ed in grocery to expand our beer offerings when sodas and kombucha moved over into the space near the coffees.
Overall the Expansion has been a wild success, with our customers loving the new layout and the Staff sharing appreciation for the newfound ease and spaciousness of the kitchen and Deli areas.
The past month has been an amazing time of working hard to figure out what’s working well, what needs tweaking and what more we can offer to our customers and community. We know how much the town of Putney and our visiting travelers love our Deli and are so excited and honored to have this beautiful new space to offer replete with more excellent and nutritious food offerings. The sky is the limit and we’ve been chasing it here at the Putney Co-op as we welcome visitors into the new spaces and plan how we can better serve them with more of what we all love!
We’d like to thank the community from the bottom of our hearts for their patience and enthusiasm throughout this process and to our wonderful Management, Staff and Board of Directors for the absolutely incredible hard work they’ve put in since the project began in August! We are all so happy and grateful for the new space and love that our customers love it.
We’ll be in touch with even more updates and exciting news!
