Old Country Store Brings New England Charm To Buzzards Bay
When Chris and Lauryn Baker opened the doors of the Old Country Store and Emporium in West Mansfield as its proud new owners in 2010, they had one thing in mind: to preserve it, in all its old-fashioned glory.
Today, more than a decade later, the Bakers have once again opened their doors—this time on Buzzards Bay’s Main Street—and given new life to the almost 200-year-old business in an area of Cape Cod that is currently undergoing its own sort of renaissance. And from its antique and Amish-made furniture to its penny candy and sweets displays, the vibe of the Old Country Store and Emporium has remained the same as it always was: an authentic New England country store.
“I guess I’m an optimist or a romantic, one of the two,” Mr. Baker said, “but I think that it’s worth saving. I’ve been doing just that for the last 12 years.”
After retiring from a career in international banking, Mr. Baker said that the next step on his to-do list was to own a business. The couple looked at a lot of different businesses, he said, but they were looking for something special.
“We wanted something that was going to be fun and beautiful every day,” he said, “some place you’d look forward to going into.”
When he walked into the Old Country Store’s original storefront in Mansfield, he knew that it was the right one.
“I texted [my wife] saying, ‘You’re not going to believe this place,’” Mr. Baker said. “And we ended up buying it just after the Great Recession in 2008. Not a great time to be buying a very, very big store, particularly when you don’t know anything about retail. I wouldn’t advise it for the faint of heart, but we’re still going.”
But the store is more than just “still going”; it is beginning to thrive as it enters its second life on Cape Cod. Although finding a storefront was a battle, picking a region was the easiest part.
“We kind of wanted the Cape Cod retirement,” Mr. Baker said, joking that the reality is “100 percent work, no retirement.” But he’s happy with it, because “that’s the way business goes.”
“This is our retirement,” he said. “We always wanted to be on the Cape, so we started looking around at different possibilities.”
Many of the places the couple looked at were too small for the massive inventory he had purchased from the store’s previous owners, which consists of goods and antiques going back 50, 60, and even 100-plus years.
“I’d toss and turn at night and worry about ‘how am I possibly going to fit all the stuff that I have into that shop?’” Mr. Baker said. “Then one day I looked one more time on the commercial listings, and this popped up. I looked at [the listings] religiously, and it was never there, but all of a sudden when I had doubts, this building popped up.”
The storefront at 134 Main Street in Buzzards Bay struck the couple as soon as they laid eyes on it. It had the same color as the old store and the same picture windows out front; even the proximity to the train bridge mimicked the train tracks that ran behind the West Mansfield location. And at over 5,000 square feet, the space would certainly work.
“We even had a cardinal in the bush right when we pulled in,” Mr. Baker said, recalling the belief of the bird bringing good luck, “so we knew this was going to be the right place for us.”
After two trips with seven moving trucks and three months of preparation, the store officially opened its doors on July 15, 2022. Opening mid-summer was not easy but as word of the quintessential New England country store spreads, Mr. Baker knows that people will come.
“We’ve been through the 2008 crash,” Mr. Baker said, “we’ve been through the Amazon craze, we’ve been through the retail apocalypse when all the shops were disappearing, we’ve been through the pandemic. And now, we’re basically the new guy on the block again.”
Mr. Baker says that while it is hard to imagine himself as the new guy on the block, the block he picked along Buzzards Bay’s Main Street is the ideal place for a store like his—one where customers can feel like they are back in time, wandering between gilded grandfather clocks, old-time cast-iron cash registers, and the curated home goods.
“I think there’s a good fit between keeping the old-school feel, which is what this is, and then having that renaissance with more housing and more retail and more services in the area,” he said.
When the Bakers bought the Old Country Store, they quickly realized that it had a strong and loyal customer base.
“It’s a very, very strong following,” Mr. Baker said. “We have customers that have been shopping in this store for over 75 years and they still come, from Mansfield, Stoughton, Easton, and Norton; they find us. They come down on a regular basis.”
Catering to the whole region rather than just the neighborhood is something the Bakers intend to continue to do, reaching from Bourne down to Provincetown, out to Mattapoisett, and up through Plymouth to Weymouth and Braintree, where Mr. Baker himself comes from. And he knows from experience that the appeal of the Old Country Store is something niche that certain people seek out, and once they find it, they are hooked. The most fun they have every day, he said, is when people discover the store for the first time and are enchanted by its old-school charm.
“We’re still the newbies, so for a lot of people it’s their first time through,” Mr. Baker said, “and they’re in awe. Spellbound. They don’t know where to look or what to do. All they know is they love it and they’re happy.”
For the Bakers, the Old Country Store was a sort of calling, and they hope the same for their customers. There is a little bit of everything for everybody, Mr. Baker said, keeping to the true roots of the New England country store, which he explained was really an early department store. From jewelry to artisanal toiletries, children’s toys and kitchenware and an array of curated provisions and other edibles, the Old Country Store is the kind of store where anything can strike a customer’s fancy.
“I think the people we cater to, they want to preserve it, they want to be part of it,” Mr. Baker said of the store, which he said is a dying breed. “It’s not really about me. I’m not going to get rich doing it. It’s about, ‘can I keep this thing alive long enough that it can be handed off to somebody else to bring their ideas and to keep it going?’”
The store was originally established in 1829, and getting it to its 200th birthday is Mr. Baker’s goal. After that, he hopes to hand it off to a new generation of shopkeepers and curators who will keep the store going well into its third century.
“We’ve kind of done all the heavy lifting to get it where it needs to be and where it can be for another 50 or 75 years,” Mr. Baker said, “because the Cape’s not going anywhere. The Cape is always going to be good.”
The Old Country Store and Emporium’s current seasonal hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 10 AM to 5 PM.