Burlington Loses Long-Time Partner as Gooseberries is Sold

No one knows yet exactly what will change, but everyone who shopped at Gooseberries–Burlington’s most unusual and only remaining family-owned grocery–knows that something will. On May 30, the Spiegelhoff family sold the last of their stores, a loved, local business operating here for more than 100 years. We could all see it coming. We just hoped it wouldn’t because this town has not only lost a unique business that truly served its community. It’s lost an example of vanishing Americana: the sole proprietor invested in the place he serves, the store owner who knows you and what you need because he’s your neighbor.

Shopping at Gooseberries was a sensory adventure. In 2017, when David Spiegelhoff could see that his small-town grocery wouldn’t last long if he didn’t adapt, he completely redesigned it. His concept was unique. Rather than a small box filled with aisles, Gooseberries redefined itself as a path through successive experiences. The shopper picked up a cart at the door and strolled along meandering lanes that revealed gem-sized heads of sweet green lettuce and tart blood oranges with ruby promise showing through their skins, pungent purple garlic and creamy potatoes the size of golf balls. No tomato ever had a bruise, no seductive box of strawberries had hidden faults. We strolled next past the flowers, crowded into ceramic pots or cut and arranged, trimmed with greetings and ribbons, then past the double doors, past the spirits and the machine that squeezed fresh oranges into juice to order, which a kind clerk would gladly mix into a mimosa and slip into your cart’s cupholder. Then we passed the bakery—whipped cream, warm bread, and the best kringle in Racine county–and the deli, the salad bar, and the sandwich bar where we might order a turkey, roasted tomato, and brie sandwich and eat it there at cafe tables. To the right stood the meat counter—regiments of marbled beef, fresh made sausages, and fish that’s never been frozen, crowned by a salmon pastrami rimmed in pepper and spices. Through the second double doors, of course, was the wine—hundreds of bottles, most of which we’d tasted at their monthly sampling events. We already knew just which ones to choose.

At the end of the paths stood a few modest, well-kept aisles of grocery items sprinkled liberally with local products like coffees and spices, all carefully selected and largely unavailable elsewhere. Anyone needing radicchio or bronze-cut pasta knew just where to find it. It was Gooseberries. Spiegelhoff won Grocer of the Year for that design and, after he did, everyone thought we would have him for a good, long time. But then came the pandemic. And then inflation. There was not enough grace left to both serve his community and assure his employees’ future. He knew that, if he could sell his store to a larger chain, his employees would keep their jobs. He chose his employees.

This is the deal: sometimes, especially when it comes to battling entrenched expectations, size matters. Part of our American inheritance is the privilege of choice that comes from abundance. We want what we want, and we don’t want to pay exorbitantly for it. If that means we sometimes have to go to the Big Box or to Overnight Amazon to get it, so be it, but we rarely remember that in doing so, we reduce the buying power of our neighborhood merchant or ignore a local artisan. Like you, I’ve taken a photo of something in a small specialty store and then shopped it online. Even the resultant twinge of conscience didn’t stop me. And, for many, the concern for value isn’t casual or situational. It’s real, particularly now, with gas topping five dollars a gallon. Many simply can’t afford to pay the prices a small store like Gooseberries has to charge to stay afloat, at least not all the time. Is anyone going to tell a single mother struggling to pay rent and raise her children responsibly that she owes it to her community to pay more for a gallon of milk at Gooseberries than she can get more affordably elsewhere?

And yet…and yet. No one really wants the Gooseberries of the world to completely disappear. I want to go to my supermarket and see the owner smile because he recognizes me. I want him to help me find the rutabaga and to recommend the proper cut of meat for the Mongolian Beef I’m making my son for Fathers’ Day. I want to retain the shopkeeper who, like Spiegelhoff, was awarded the Community Service Award, Excellence in Operations Award, Political Action Award, Progressive Grocer’s Outstanding Single Store Award, VFW 2022 Citizens of the year Award, and the Burlington Chamber of Commerce President’s Award and Community Service Awards. I want to acknowledge that it costs him to be there, that he puts in 10 to 13 hours a day, Monday through Saturday, because other family members can’t. I want to remember that he was sometimes there, too, on Sundays after church. I want to remember that he adds more than another choice to my community. His loss condemns me to the tedious wasteland of mass production and marketing. A merchant like Spiegelhoff not only adds quality, but a kind of soul and beauty.

And I need to remember that relationships like these do not come for free. If I want access to places like Gooseberries, it’s going to cost me, too. Losing Gooseberries doesn’t just limit our options. It limits our dreams, both individually and as a multidimensional democratic society. Places like Gooseberries example the national nature of neighborliness and guard us from being diminished by homogeneity or made insipid by mediocrity. In the end, we get the marketplace we create through shopping and, if we want one that is varied and interesting, some of our dollars need to go to places like Gooseberries.