Commodities Natural Market owners Audra and Michael Hughes shuttered Winooski’s only downtown grocery on April 16 to concentrate on construction of a larger store to replace their current Commodities in Stowe, according to an announcement on the company’s website.
“We love Winooski and loved serving the community,” Michael Hughes told Seven Days via email.
The new location in Stowe is slated to triple the size of the existing market there, he wrote: “With three young children and an expanding business, it made the most sense for our family to focus our energy in Stowe.”
Commodities filled a food desert in downtown Winooski in December 2017 when it started selling fresh produce, local bread, organic and natural foods, and bulk items in a 3,300-square-foot space on Winooski Falls Way. It followed the Stowe location, which opened in 2015 at 512 Mountain Road as Hughes’ second store. He launched Commodities in the East Village of New York in 1993; that store shuttered in 2018.
Hughes wrote that he expected another market would take the vacant Winooski space but had no information about prospective tenants. Construction began a few weeks ago on the new Commodities, at 1652 Mountain Road in Stowe, and it is slated to open in about a year, he wrote.
Hughes is still finalizing plans for the new, larger Commodities in Stowe and will share details when he has them, he wrote.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2023.
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