NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/tag/walter-stewarts-market)
For this installment of our holiday shopping series, we met Monday afternoon with Walter Stewart’s Market’s retiring and new store managers—Ann Cheney and Mike Gomez, respectively. Here’s a transcription of our interview. ***
New Canaanite: How are things going this holiday season? What are you seeing? Mike Gomez: Busy.
For today’s installment in our local holiday shopping series, we spoke to Ann Cheney, store manager at Walter Stewart’s Market. (Note that the deadline for ordering for the holidays from the Stewart’s meat department is 12 p.m. Thursday and the catering department cut-off is 3 p.m. Thursday.)
Here’s a transcription of our conversation.
***
New Canaanite: What’s it been like this holiday shopping season here at Stewart’s? Ann Cheney: It’s been very busy. Our customers are looking forward to the holiday with great anticipation, and preparing their homes for arriving family members. And we’re ready.
What have been some of the special items or holiday-related items that have been moving well?
The main event is, I think, the focal point when you’re starting to plan for the holiday.
For this installment of our local holiday shopping series, we talked to Ann Cheney, store manager at Walter Stewart’s Market.
Here’s a transcription of our conversation. ***
New Canaanite: Talk to me a little bit about Walter Stewart’s and what the store likes to do during the holidays.
Ann Cheney: Walter Stewart’s is the New Canaan community market and we like to have everything for our many customers, whether it’s an easy dinner preparation or an extravagant pull-out-all-the-stops holiday meal, meal ingredient or catering. We do that all throughout December.
What kind of things are people coming in to look for, specifically, during the holidays? Our customers are looking for special gifts, treats for the grandchildren, treats for themselves. We offer a wide variety of candy and floral items, in terms of gifts.
‘Who Knew?’ is sponsored by Walter Stewart’s Market. Once upon a time, men dressed like Cary Grant, and sandwiches were what people ate for lunch. From kindergarten classrooms to corporate boardrooms, one could observe people at midday consuming an ingeniously portable combination of ‘bread’ and ‘things.’ There was an order to life, and while I’m not suggesting that correlation is causation, it’s worth noting that, back when we all ate sandwiches, nobody wore Celtics jerseys on airplanes or flossed their teeth on the subway.
Perhaps it’s a profusion of choice–granted, much of it positive and health-minded—that’s gotten us away from such norms. Kindergarteners, if Instagram is to be believed, now dine on elaborate bento boxes of hand-shelled edamame, hummus, and gluten-free, organic pretzels. Office folks can now Uber Eats an uninspired hexagonal tub from Sweetgreen, undertip the guy in the lobby, and sprint back to volley emails into oblivion.
It’s also the sandwich’s fault, or at least the modern fast-casual incarnation of the sandwich’s fault, that our ardor for a handheld square of lunchtime bliss has cooled. Have you ever been to a Panera?
Hundreds of bargain-hunters visited the downtown Saturday for the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce’s annual sidewalk sale. Held on pedestrian-only stretches of Elm and Forest Streets, shoppers hit the downtown early as temperatures were expected to soar into the mid-90s amid a sustained heat wave in the region. “The street is full of all sorts of great merchants and organizations,” Chamber Executive Director Laura Budd said amid the crowds near Elm and Park Streets where two food trucks kept visitors fed. “It feels like a classic New Canaan summer day and we’re really excited to see all the people down here despite the heat. There’s a nice breeze coming down Elm Street so we feel pretty lucky.”
Nonprofit organizations, including Wildlife In Crisis, Staying Put in New Canaan and local party committees, set up booths alongside retailers and service businesses in curbside tents, many of them passing out water to downtown visitors.