Lisai’s becomes Smitty’s with new owner

 

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2020 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Garrison Smith is no stranger to working 12 hours a day, but it’s a long way from working as an attorney and corporate counsel to babysitting an ailing cooler until service can arrive. Smith is the new owner of Lisai’s Chester Market, whose name will be changed to Smitty’s.

Smith and his wife Lisa have had a second home on Route 11 west for seven years although they have been coming to the area for a long time. All three of their sons – now ages 18 to 25 – learned to ski at Okemo Mountain Resort and at some point the family decided to find a place in Vermont.

“We loved the area,” says Smith who hails from Lexington, Mass. “We stayed at the Stone Hearth Inn, looked around and fell in love with Chester.”

When Smith heard that Lisai’s was for sale, he was not quite ready to leave the corporate sphere.

“I figured five more years or so then we would move up permanently and I’d find something to do,” says Smith.  “But an opportunity to do something like this doesn’t come along every day, so I had to look at it.

“I started talking with Lonnie in December,” says Smith. “I knew the store from a customer’s perspective, and I asked a lot of people what they thought of the idea. They were supportive, but they said it would be a whole lot of work.”

Smith had no retail experience, so he worked with Lisai for two months as both men decided if this was the right move.

“He was interviewing me to see if I was the kind of person he wanted to take over the store he had built up over 27 years. It was a long interview because I worked side by side with Lonnie for two months. And the more I worked here the more excited I got,” says Smith.

Long time owners Lonnie and Obe Lisai sold the store to Smith and retired in late May of this year.

Smith says he has a lot of ideas but he’s taking it slow. To start, he moved the hot food display to the middle of the wine room and started offering fresh breads. In the future, Bonny Hudson, who prepares the to-go foods and lunch bar, will begin packaging what Smith calls “evening meals” in family sized packages to add to the individual servings now offered.

Down the road, he expects to take out the wall to the office and make it part of the sales floor. He’s also thinking about ways to cut congestion during the lunch rush.

Smith is also shifting some things around the store to be able to do more, such as offer a wider variety of produce and carry more products. In effect, he wants to continue to be that full service grocery store on a very small footprint.

“I don’t want to lose anything. Everything in this store sells,” says Smith, noting that the market sells “a fair amount” of cottage cheese with pineapple. “Who knew,” laughs Smith. “That’s the fun of it, seeing the trends, finding what people are using.”

Smith says he’s happy to try new products, but has to be mindful of how much shelf space he’s using.

If Lisai’s Market is known for anything, it’s meats and Smith says that will continue. “As a customer I always wondered ‘how fresh is everything?’ ” says Smith, referring to how quickly meats get sold. “There’s nothing in that meat cooler that’s more than 48 hours old. We crank it out.”

After having cooler problems, Smith sees one of his first big changes will be behind the scenes when he installs a new walk-in cooler at the back of the store. This will give him more flexibility in ordering and will help him expand Bonny Hudson’s kitchen.

Smith says his wife Lisa is also working at the store, checking out customers, learning the ropes of the back office and a host of other tasks. Smith says she enjoys meeting everyone in town.

And the name of the market? Garrison Smith says it’s not named after himself,  but his grandfather, Lewis Smith who was a carpenter, served in World War II and was a family man. Smith named the market after him because when he thinks of his grandfather he thinks of hard work, integrity and family. “Those are the values I want to continue in the market.”