Vermont town seeks new owner for store that is ‘heart and soul’ of community
The husband and wife who have run Ripton Country Store since 1976 are retiring.
If you’ve always dreamed of owning a general store in a small New England town, the residents of Ripton, Vermont, have a job for you. Bill McKibben, the author and environmentalist who founded 350.org, penned an op-ed for the New York Times advertising that the town in the heart of the Green Mountain National Forest is “about to lose the heart and soul” of its community with the retirement of a husband and wife who have been running Ripton Country Store since 1976. “Dick and Sue Collitt are retiring, and we need someone to buy them out and take their place,” McKibben wrote. “Because if you don’t have a store, you can’t really have a town.”
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The Vermont resident assured interested buyers that there’s “guaranteed traffic” at the store, with everyone in town stopping by “every day or two” for conversation and supplies at the shop that’s almost always open:
Two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars gets you the most classic of country stores, not in a Colonial Williamsburg kind of way but in a slightly sagging kind of way — there’s a potbellied wood stove up against the deli counter, right next to the coffee pot. There’s penny candy against the wall (Atomic Fireballs!). And pretty much everything else: brake fluid, animal crackers, 3-in-One oil, leather boot laces. The latest issue of North American Whitetail (“the big buck authority”). Eggs from local hens; pickled beets and sweet relish that some of the neighbors have put up. Lasagna noodles, rock salt, kitty litter, meatloaf mix, clothespins, starch, cupcake papers.
Read the full op-ed at the Times.
