Why Vermont General Stores Keep Losing Their Owners
Vermont has lost more than 100 country stores over the previous two decades, according to a 2022 count from The Boston Globe.
So here’s a fair question: How many owners of Vermont’s surviving country stores know who’s taking over once they’re done?
Not every one of them has an answer.
This is why Vermont general stores keep losing their owners.
J.J. Hapgood General Store
Hapgood General Store in Peru has been open, in one form or another, since 1827.
That’s nearly two centuries.
The store even picked up a bit of Hollywood history along the way.
Crews used it as a filming location for the 1987 movie Baby Boom, and visitors still stop in just to see the spot.
Juliette Britton bought the store in 2004, when it sat dark and falling apart.
The renovation took nearly two decades, and she listed the store for sale in 2023 at $1.5 million.
She was ready for something new.
Four family members bought it that November: Leslie French, Michael French, Jon Cifuentes, and Lauren Cifuentes.
They spent the next three years expanding the business, and now they’re ready to sell it themselves.
The 2026 listing doesn’t name a buyer.
It just says the nearly 200-year-old store needs its “next steward.”
Buxton’s Store
Buxton’s Store in Orwell ran for 57 years before it closed for good in October 2024.
Fifty-seven years ended in nothing.
The Buxton family kept the doors open through floods and snowstorms for more than half a century, and no buyer stepped up when they decided to close.
A group of Orwell residents formed the Orwell Store Community Trust to try to save the building instead.
The nonprofit doesn’t want to run the store day to day.
It wants to buy the building, pay off any debt tied to it, and lease the space to an independent operator at a fair rate.
The building was listed around $500,000 as of late 2025, and the trust is still raising money and applying for state grants to buy it outright.
A board member working on the effort points to other towns that pulled off the same rescue once the debt was gone.
He figures Orwell has a shot at it too.
Nobody has signed on to run the place yet.
The Owner Pipeline Problem
General stores keep losing their owners for reasons that go well beyond any one town’s bad luck.
That 2022 count from The Boston Globe put the losses at more than 100 stores between the early 2000s and 2022.
The stores that survived generally did it the same way: A new owner stepped in before the previous owner had to close the doors.
Many of the owners still running country stores today bought in decades ago, and retirement eventually catches up with everyone.
Running one isn’t easy work.
The job means early mornings, late nights, and weekends spent behind the register instead of off it, for pay that rarely matches the hours.
Many general stores also compete against bigger grocery chains and delivery apps based in nearby towns, which squeezes profit margins that were already thin to begin with.
When an owner is finally ready to step back, the next person in line isn’t always waiting.
Psst! How much do you know about Vermont’s general stores and small-town shops? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Vermont Country Store IQ
Think you know Vermont’s general stores? Take the quiz and find out.
President Calvin Coolidge was born in 1872 in a room behind his father’s general store in which Vermont village?
A Separate Post Office Contract
A general store's post office doesn't always survive when the business changes hands.
Jericho Center Country Store had run a contract post office since at least 1904, with 135 antique brass mailboxes built into the wall.
When the store sold to a new owner in 2024, the United States Postal Service ended that contract anyway, with the final day of mail delivery landing that July.
The building stayed open under new ownership.
The post office didn't.
West Townshend Country Store fought a similar threat and won.
A community nonprofit runs that store now, and it convinced the Postal Service to keep the post office boxes in place after a relocation scare.
What a Store Sale Doesn't Guarantee
Buying a Vermont general store doesn't automatically buy its post office along with it.
The Postal Service signs a separate contract with each store that hosts a postal unit, apart from whoever owns the building.
A new owner can keep the shelves stocked and still lose the counter where neighbors buy stamps and pick up mail.
The Fix More Towns Try First
Towns facing the loss of a general store owner increasingly reach for the same fix: A nonprofit trust that owns the building outright.
In Strafford, the Strafford Community Trust raised $1.8 million and bought Coburns' General Store outright in June 2025, then leased it to a new operator to run day to day.
It's nobody's risk now.
Shrewsbury did something similar with Pierce's Store years earlier, and Elmore residents raised $400,000 to buy their store's building in 2021.
Towns that pull this off rarely know it will work at the first town meeting where somebody floats the idea.
They know it only once the money is raised, the deed changes hands, and somebody new is standing behind the register.
Orwell hasn't gotten there yet.
The Orwell Store Community Trust is still raising money to buy Buxton's Store outright, and the building sits empty until it does.
9 Things People Find Out the Hard Way After Moving to Vermont
A moving truck idles in a gravel driveway outside Burlington while the new owner signs one last piece of paper at the closing table.
It's a Vermont form that has nothing to do with their mortgage.
9 Things People Find Out the Hard Way After Moving to Vermont
8 Yosemite Mistakes Tourists Make Once Summer Ends
Labor Day clears out Yosemite's parking lots fast, and the park's calendar moves on just as quickly.
Shuttles, roads, and campsites all shift within days of the crowds thinning out, catching many visitors off guard.
