Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Published: 1/28/2022 5:09:11 PM
Modified: 1/28/2022 5:07:54 PM
A new restaurant is open in Greenfield, bringing out residents who are excited to see an eatery return to town.
“We missed having a restaurant,” said resident Janice Pack. “We used to really enjoy coming down here, and now we can again.”
The Local’s Cafe & Tavern, which recently opened at 4 Slip Road in Greenfield, is the brainchild of resident Heather Gagnon, who said she had been thinking about opening a coffee shop or a cafe for some time.
“That was my thing,” she said. “And it just so happened that the one place in Greenfield closed down and there was nothing, and everybody was like, ‘When is something going to open there?’ And I was like, ‘All right, I guess I’m going to take the plunge and do it.’”
The previous restaurant in that spot was Hungry Goats Eatery, which opened in December of 2019, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Gagnon, it closed in March of 2020 after the pandemic shut down many businesses, and the spot had been empty since then.
“So we came in,” she said. “The opportunity popped up.”
For Gagnon, one of the final pushes to move forward with this idea was when her youngest child started preschool. As a stay-at-home mother, Gagnon found herself in a new place.
“I was like, ‘OK, what am I gonna do?’” she said. “And I really wanted to do this.”
Her husband, Randy, said they made their move to lease the space – from the same owners as the previous tenant – in August 2021, and have spent the months since getting it ready to go.
“The community has been thirsty for something like this,” he said.
The process of getting the restaurant ready to open was hard, Gagnon said, and took longer than she anticipated.
“We had some setbacks with things wrong with the place, and trying to get it all situated,” she said. Some of the kitchen equipment wasn’t working when they moved in, and there were many repairs that needed to get done as a whole. Plus, with pandemic-related supply chain issues and shortages, getting that work done was more arduous than she expected.
“We’d get something done, and then I’d be like, ‘Oh, now I need to do this’, and the list never ends,” she said.
But through all of that, she said, they’ve found themselves able to open up to the community again.
“It’s been really awesome,” Gagnon said. “I like it so far; it’s been really fun.”
Especially exciting for her has been the community support from Greenfield residents who get to have a restaurant in town again.
“Everybody coming in has been excited to see us open,” Gagnon said. “And everybody in the restaurant is actually from Greenfield.”
“This is the best thing that ever happened,” said Greenfield resident Larry Gilbert. As a guitarist and vocalist, he will also be performing at the cafe every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., something that he and Gagnon worked out together.
The current business model for The Local’s is to serve breakfast and lunch, but Gagnon said that she hopes to expand, both in terms of menu offerings and opening up the tavern part of the restaurant space.
“We want to change as we go, so we’ll grow and develop,” she said. “For now, we’re really just getting a handle on things, in terms of what people want, and just getting our name out there too.”
The Local’s is open Tuesday through Thursday from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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