Tatum Stewart is doing more than one thing at a time. Again. (Can we please not call it multitasking?) She’s contemplating a reporter’s question while keeping an eye on the activity at Plimoth General Store, her Main Street business that opened in June. It features just enough of a lot of things, filling a void in downtown retail. She and her staff are also setting a new standard for service in the commercial district. And only a handful of other shops can match Stewart’s keen sense of aesthetics.
For starters, there are no black-marker messages on yellowed paper plastered to the windows – which are kept clean – and the display tables never look like a three-year-old got his hands on the goods.
The phone rings and Stewart snaps to attention. Just as she’s about to get up, an employee answers the call. Stewart relaxes. For a moment.
It’s that kind of focus on detail and customer service that comes through over and over during our hour-long conversation.
Stewart is all-in on being a retail entrepreneur. She estimates her work week at a “solid” 80 to 90 hours. She has no illusions about achieving the fabled work-life balance. And she doesn’t mind that her opinions on what downtown does and doesn’t need sometime land her “in trouble.” Not that she has time for the blowback, anyway. Operating Plimoth General Store is all-consuming. Small-business owners who believe otherwise are “wantapreneurs,” she says.
It’s an interesting time,” Stewart says. “People think, ‘I’m going to open a business, but I want work-life balance.’ I hear these newer business owners who say, ‘I’m only going to open three, four days a week because I’m the only one and I have things to do.’ Maybe retail’s not for you. Maybe restaurants are not for you. It’s a commitment, it’s a grind. You are in business, but you’re also in service. And being in service means that I’m open seven days a week.”
Stewart opened her Craft Beer Cellar franchise across Main Street more than eight years ago. (Craft Beer Cellar is incorporated into the general store, and it includes a smartly curated selection of wines.) She recalls spending sluggish January days staring at the building that now houses Plimoth General Store. It used to house an antiques business known as Main Street Exchange.
“I’ve always been obsessed with general stores,” she says. “I grew up in Marstons Mills and there was a general store. It was just such a treat as a kid to be able to go there. Even as an adult, it’s something I always look forward to. I’ve actually structured vacations around going to general stores.”
That pull, she says, is that general stores are “about a community hub and center…When my store was across the street, my husband and I would look at this building and say, ‘Oh, if we ever won the lottery, we would open a general store in that building.’”
They didn’t hit the big payout – and thankfully, no lottery tickets or Keno screens mar the interior of Plimoth General Store – but she did meet developer Rick Vayo, who owns the building.
“He has the same visions I do for downtown,” Stewart says. “It was nice to finally find that kindred spirit who doesn’t think that we’re crazy for all these ideas that we have and that we’re too progressive.”
The project, from concept to opening the doors, happened at warp speed, about a year and half.
“It was like, we want it, we want it now,” she says. “Sleep was optional.”
Stewart says she pinpointed several unmet needs that were solid enough to build a business plan on.
“As a business owner downtown, I’d always say, ‘I wish I could just grab a salad for lunch,’ or ‘I wish I could just grab a sandwich.’ There are plenty of amazing restaurants down here, but for just a quick grab-and-go lunch, it is very limited.”
“The second opportunity was that I saw a lot of people coming up from the boats asking where they could go [to get] provisions. They were like, ‘What, 7-Eleven’s the only option?’ It was either go to 7-Eleven, not a good option, or when you come in from your boat, get an Uber, go to Stop and Shop, and Uber back down to the boat. Third, there were so many more people moving downtown.”
And those people, she notes, increasingly are boomers downsizing or young professionals on the rise. Both groups tend to be willing and able to spend money for convenience and quality.
“It was really just looking at the demographic shifting and knowing that there’s an opportunity here for us to provide some higher end items,” Stewart says.
While the store sells everything from cupboard essentials to candles to clothing to toys, it’s the popularity of its food that has surprised her the most. In addition to freshly made sandwiches, salads, and baked goods served at a counter that recalls soda shops of yore, there’s an assortment of refrigerated prepared foods.
We have so many regulars that are coming in daily,” Stewart says. “We have some that do their grocery shopping here on Thursday and Friday…They’re buying the chicken pot pies, the salads, vegetables.”
Catering to the people moving into downtown obviously matters to her. The days of relying on the Pilgrim story to do the heavy lifting are over. Stewart says she knows that raising Plymouth’s profile on a bigger scale is essential to its prosperity. She often talks about the “three P’s.”
“There’s Portsmouth, there’s Portland, and Plymouth needs to be the next thing,” she says. “How we do that is we fill all these nooks and crannies on this street with great retail, great restaurants, and bring up the level of services. I said years ago that as these condos come in, the people who are going to be moving into them are going to want concierge service in terms of specialty treatment. And there’s not a lot of that happening.”
When I ask whether she thinks a small but stubborn faction of business owners have no interest in the “rising tides lift all boats” approach, her eyes narrow.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a small faction, I’d say it’s a rather large faction. Look at some of the internal conversations on Facebook groups between business owners complaining about tourists or a tourist shop on the next street that has shirts that say, ‘It’s tourist season, happy hunting.’”
“It’s just not welcoming. I had an experience in here probably about a month ago where a woman came in a little upset. She had asked in another store if they could give her some other ideas of where to go. She’d already seen the Rock and was here with her daughter. She said she was told: ‘I don’t speak to tourists.’ She came up here, and we gave her the brochure from [tourist organization] See Plymouth, gave her all of our insider tips, wrote down notes for her. She left in such a better place. And that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.”
The more Stewart talks, the more I feel her sense of urgency about downtown’s business climate. There’s still resistance to change, especially change that doesn’t first have to run through a gauntlet of ponderous hearings, mountainous paperwork, and discouraging obstacles. For all its growth and progress, there’s a dwindling but vocal contingent of so-called townies who romanticize the past and lambast the present. They’re still mourning the 1620 Restaurant and the dank confines of McGrath’s restaurant (now the site of East Bay Grille). The gun store – with its window signs extolling violence and right wing fringe politics – is gone, but there are still some less than savory businesses, and too many rundown storefronts.
“When I moved into Craft Beer Cellar eight years ago, I said, ‘OK, Plymouth is not there yet, but it will be,’” Stewart says. “And honestly, it took longer than I had thought. But this summer, when I left work sometimes and drove through downtown, I said, ‘It’s happening!’ I would text my girlfriend, who owns a restaurant in town, and tell her the people are young, they’re well dressed. I don’t recognize a single face and it’s amazing. It is just this whole new vibrancy of businesses and customers.”
Mike Landers shines in the spotlight
As we reported recently, the select board on Nov. 21 awarded Mike Landers the first Edward W. Santos Community Service Award. Landers is best known for creating Projects Arts, a nonprofit that for decades has produced free concerts on the waterfront.
Santos, who died in 2022 at the age of 92, relentlessly volunteered for groups and causes on behalf of the town where he lived his entire life.
The award was the brainchild of former longtime Plymouth resident Michael Gallerani.
Landers suffered a major stroke at home in October of last year while working on a Project Arts grant. His recovery has been steady and taxing. But he was there at town hall last week to receive the Santos award, buoyed by family and friends. The honor is the start of what is bound to become an inspirational tradition. Landers has never let bureaucracy and naysayers prevent him from tapping into the town’s potential. Others can learn from his attitude.
A cable TV programming note
For those of you who watch local government boards and other community shows on TV through Comcast, Dave Antoine, PACTV’s government services manager, says a channel shuffle is about to take place. As of Tues., Dec. 6, public access channel 13 will become 6, education access 14 will move to channel 8, and government access 15 moves to channel 9. Sigh. Comcast continues to do its best to make sure the public doesn’t see public officials in action. (The select board does its part by doing too much business out of public view, but that’s a subject for another column.)
Season’s greetings – parking is free
As of Friday, Dec. 1, parking is free in the downtown/waterfront district until April. But Park Plymouth, which overseas parking, points out that there are still some restrictions in place. “During this period, there is no need to pay the posted hourly rates but you must observe the posted time limits that are in effect between the hours of 9:00am and 7:00pm, seven days a week and on holidays,” its website says. “During the free parking season, you risk getting a ticket only if you don’t observe the posted time limits or other restrictions at any parking location. Please note that Plymouth parking rates and regulations are in effect every day of the week, including on Sundays and holidays. “
That means you can still get a ticket, but you’ll have to work hard to be flagged for a violation.
Mark Pothier can be reached at mark@plymouthindependent.org.