Bread and Butter (B&B) Neighborhood Market Owners Stacy Poore and Aubrey Day saw a need for a fresh market in the downtown area. With a specific and rigorous approach to local products and service, B&B Neighborhood Market has become a community favorite both for its accessibility but also its freshness and calming ambiance.
Poore says that from the beginning she and Day were developing B&B’s brand identity. They believe that community happens around food. “So that forms pretty much everything we do, whether it’s trying to find local food and beverage, whether it’s cultivating customers, whether it’s the people we hire. We feel like our work is important, and we focus on building a community around food.”
Day reflects this saying that, as a neighborhood market, they believe in not only bringing good clean food to the community (which she believes is essential for all people) but adding to the neighborhood identity. Day says they have a lot of folks who shop at B&B as their basic store because they’re the closest grocery to them. However, there are also a lot of people who come there also as a destination because of some of the products that B&B carries.
The Importance of Sourcing Local at Bread and Butter Neighborhood Market
“We source local first where we can,” explains Day. “And when we say local, we mean Colorado because we do have a lot of great suppliers right here in town, in Colorado Springs, in El Paso County. So, we source local first and then go out from there because we do want to be a full-scale grocery store, and not everything can be found right here.”
Day continues that the beauty of the size and scale of their market and the fact that she and Poore are there every day adds to that connection. “Someone who has something that they have been selling in the farmers market or want to take to the wholesale level, can come in and talk to us about it. We can tell them a bit of what’s required for them to be able to sell to us.”
Day says that even before COVID, there was a desire to sort of strive for local as much as possible. “People are wanting to buy local. People are wanting to live and work in smaller proximity to each other, spend less time in their vehicles, get to know their neighbors more, and know who they’re buying from.” She says this was one of the reasons why she and Poore decided it was a good time to open the market. They met through mutual friends and found that they had both done research into opening the same kind of business, so they teamed up … and Bread and Butter Neighborhood Market was born.
Many Products Driving by Customer Requests
Poore says that a large percentage of products that they have brought in are the result of requests from customers, which is a great thing that they can do as a small business. “If somebody likes something and they want us to carry it, we want to carry it, so they’ll come back.”
Poore says there were some tried-and-true products around town when they opened that they knew they wanted to carry. “There’s a small bakery here in town called the Sourdough Boulangerie. We work with a place called the French Kitchen, Snowberry Bakehouse, Hold Fast Coffee, and Loyal Coffee. These are all mainstays and staples of our community, and we knew we wanted to have them.”
Poore says that they also learned a lot on the liquor side as well. “We have great stuff here in Colorado Springs … places like Distillery 291, 1350 Distilling, Axe and the Oak.” These were mainstays she says already had a reputation that people knew, and wanted to carry. “We’ve learned a lot by just listening to what our customers want. If they want a particular type of flour, or a particular type of cream, or a particular type of bourbon, we will try to get that so that we can have it and they’ll come back.”
Day says people are always surprised that they have so many “groceries” in the grocery store. “We are a bonafide grocery store. We had a couple in here today, who just bought everything they needed to make a cake from scratch. We have people who come in who are making a pizza crust, or maybe they’re going to be making a casserole, or they’re looking for six or seven types of vegetables to roast. We have everything you need in terms of ingredients, spices, produce, meat, dairy, cheese, dry goods…anything you might need to make a meal.” They also carry quite a bit of prepared food including salads, sandwiches, lasagnas, and enchiladas. Day continues, saying “We make a lot of our own prepared foods including sandwiches, egg salad, chicken salad, appetizers, and things like that.”
Expanding Into Prepared Foods and Meals
Poore echoes this saying that they are still in the new stages of making their own prepared foods. “So we began with things that were not difficult that we knew people wanted, and we do make a lot of those.” They have started doing more involved preparations including those for the holidays, putting together Thanksgiving meals and Christmas meals.
“As time and space and finances provide, we can begin to expand that to offer more meal-type things. We’ll be doing some more of that after the first of the year. But right now, it’s pretty basic based on what we sell a lot of, and that’s soups, salads, and sandwiches,” Poore says.
Poore says that the ambiance of the market is important as well. “From the very beginning, Aubrey and I have wanted a nice, clean, bright, inviting space, well-stocked, tidy, and full of options. You won’t have analysis paralysis or decision-making paralysis here. You might have four or five different things to choose from in one category. You might have two things to choose from in one category. And in the liquor store, you’re going to have 20 things to choose from in one category.”
“There’s a lot that goes into what we want the place to look like and feel like when people come in,” Poore continues. She says that they receive great feedback. “People like it here. They like the team. They say, ‘I really like coming here. It feels special.’ We try to learn people’s names. We have a lot of repeat customers, so we try to get to know the people in the neighborhood. You can’t walk into King Soopers and have someone call you by name, it’s just not the same.”
Creating a Welcoming Environment and Feeling the Love
While they don’t deliver or ship, Poore says they do get some folks calling and saying, “My son is moving to the neighborhood. I’d love for him to have a bag of groceries when he gets there. Can you help me put something together?’ – And we’re happy to do that sort of thing where then the person comes in and picks up the groceries. But we’re not doing any shipping or delivery or anything like that.”
In terms of their growth in the past two years and the love they received from the community, Poore and Day see themselves in a good place. Poore explains, “I would say that Aubrey and I smile and laugh a whole lot more right now than we did 24 months ago. The middle of the pandemic was just really hard.” She says they spent a whole year talking to other small business owners before embarking on this venture.”
One of the pieces of advice that we got was, ‘You’re going to have a whole lot better time doing this together, as opposed to trying to do it by yourself. I could have never done this without Aubrey, and Aubrey could not have done this without me. I bring to the table things that Aubrey doesn’t. She brings to the table things that I don’t. And combined, we make as close to a full person as we can. It’s still very stressful. We’re still very new. We’re still trying and learning and growing, but we’re right where we’re supposed to be. And we have so much support from the community, from our team, from our investors, and from all our amazing customers. So, I just think we’re very grateful to be where we are.”
