HARDWICK – The foundation of the current Buffalo Mountain Market was laid in the late ’60s and early ’70s with the back-to-the-land movement happening across our country.
People dreamed of leaving the rat race behind and returning to a simpler life and homegrown food, without all the chemicals and additives. Most came to Vermont from other places taking many different routes to get to Hardwick.
Vermonters accepted the visitors even as their kids were moving to the city. They taught them drive a tractor, harness a team, plow the land, grow a garden, cut firewood, cook with wood, bake bread and help each other. It was fertile ground for a co-op.
There were already two buying club co-ops in the area: the Northeast Kingdom Food Co-op, which started at the commune Entropy Acres in West Glover, later moving to Barton, and the Plainfield Co-op, begun by Goddard College students and graduates. Each month someone would send a mimeographed order sheet listing bulk foods, cheese, produce and miscellaneous items to all member households. Club members would fill it out, mail it back with a check, and someone would then head to Boston and New York wholesalers in a pickup, VW bus or a rented box truck. Upon their return, member volunteers would meet to divide up the goods for each household.
Things changed when a young couple, recent graduates of Goddard College, moved to Hardwick from Plainfield and bought the old store across from what is now Poulin Lumber. Living upstairs, but not wanting to run a store by themselves, they proposed the idea of forming a storefront co-op to members of the buying clubs.
The cooperative business model began in England in 1844 in response to the inequities of wealth created by the Industrial Revolution and the altering of food (such as mixing chalk into flour) by factory owners in their company stores. Owned and governed by members, co-ops are created for the benefit of the people who use them.
Co-ops are place-based, caring about the communities they operate in and helping to keep money circulating locally, rather than having it siphoned off to distant corporate owners and shareholders.
While profit is essential for staying in business, it is not the sole motivating factor. Today there are over one billion co-op members worldwide (and 2025 has been named the UN International Year of Cooperatives).
photo by Tom Borrup
Many meetings and much work later, Buffalo Mountain Co-op opened its doors in early November of 1975 as the first storefront among the modern-day natural food co-ops in Vermont.
Buffalo Mountain began on a very modest scale. A day with $100 in sales was considered wildly successful. Fundraising dinners were held fairly regularly to keep the organization afloat, and while not making much money they served to build community among member-owners.
That first storefront was located in a flood plain, and many winter days the Sam Daniels wood furnace in the cellar would be under water, so that workers needed to keep their coats on. Some of the January thaws created ice dams on the river. There were times when there was a foot of water in the store itself.
When the couple who owned the building split up and moved away, they offered the building to the co-op, but co-op members decided it was instead a great time to move. So, in 1979, Buffalo Mountain moved into what had once been the barn at the Jeudevine Mansion on N. Main Street, sharing the space with a liquor store and Caspian Arms.
Cal Foster, who owned both Caspian Arms and the building, said he needed the space to expand his business. There were then three options for places to move: Hardwick Knitwear, next to the American Legion; Pete’s Family Market, on Mill Street, where the co-op is now and the site of the old IGA at 39 S. Main Street, now owned by The Civic Standard.
With encouragement from Main Street business owners hoping to attract more shoppers, loans from members and a local bank, along with some financing from the owner of the IGA building, that building was purchased and the co-op moved in 1991.
Continued growth at a fairly steady pace created an opportunity in the late 1990s to follow cooperative principle No. 7, “Concern for Community,” when it began weekly community dinners at the United Church in Hardwick, which are still happening regularly.
In 2004, finally succumbing to years of requests to serve food, a café opened upstairs. It ran successfully until 2005, the day after Thanksgiving, when one of the neighboring buildings caught fire.
In January, the store closed, while members packed everything up preparing for a move back to the Jeudevine Mansion. It reopened in a week and renovation of the South Main Street store began.
Extensive renovations including leveling floors and insulating the walls and roof. Much of the equipment got upgraded and it became a more usable space. Insurance covered all of the moving expenses, including rent and most of the renovations, with a bank loan covering the extra improvements.
In early June 2006 the co-op moved back into the renovated building, with the store then known as the Buffalo Mountain Food Cooperative and Cafe.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, the co-op’s response was to shut the store but offer curbside pickup for a few months. It eventually allowed a limited number of masked shoppers in the store.
The pandemic brought home to members the fact that the coop had outgrown its space.
The Hardwick Village Market on Mill Street then became available. After the pandemic, the parties began negotiating after an earlier failed attempt to reach an agreement.
The co-op’s board began the process of collecting data and poring over financials, followed by member informational meetings in the fall of 2021. One issue was that the sales price for the market included the conventional grocery line it carried.
The board asked, “could we combine the two product lines, become Hardwick’s locally owned grocery store, and serve the needs of our whole community, not just the natural food buying crowd.” They found a hopeful sign in data showing only about 10 percent of members bought all their groceries at the co-op. Evolving tastes and changed financial situations meant that it was serving only part of its member-owner’s grocery needs.
In the late fall of 2021, following a two-week process of voting on whether to move the co-op, the tally showed 86 percent in favor of moving.
With member loans, donations and grants bringing in almost $1 million, the co-op became the new owner of its present building on March 15, 2022, to be named Buffalo Mountain Market.
Both stores were operated separately while renovations to the new store began.
Shoppers at the Village Market watched improvements being made, while being greeted by the same staff, most of whom stayed on, and finding the same products on the shelves. Slowly, the fear of the “hippies” taking over their store began to dissipate.
In late June, both stores closed for three days, while the co-op moved into its new home.
Today, the Buffalo Mountain Market has over 4,500 member-owners, annual sales of over $6 million, a quarter of which are from local suppliers, and employs over 60 people.
This story is excerpted from a longer article published in the 2025 edition of the “Hazen Road Dispatch,” a publication of Greensboro Historical Society.
