Conscious co-founders Lucy Muellner and Erin Johnson opened Fork & Anchor to bring simply prepared foods to their local, seaside community.
APRIL 28, 2015
Over the past several years, countless books and films have documented the moral and ecological dilemmas presented by today's industrial food chain, giving many pause about where our food comes from. For Lucy Muellner, it prompted a business idea.
The movement, Muellner says, “opened my eyes to the fact that the feeding and treatment of an animal, including the distance it has to travel for slaughter, is reflected in its taste. I knew from experience that the chicken and beef I ate in France tasted better than most of what I've had in this country."
It was important to us to maintain the customer base that had frequented the store for years, and at the same time, pique the interest of those who'd never stepped foot in the store with our new range of products.
That led Muellner, a former fashion stylist and culinary school graduate, along with longtime friend and fellow Brooklyn transplant Erin Johnson, to start East Marion's Fork & Anchor general store in 2011.
Fork & Anchor co-founders Erin Johnson and Lucy Muellner
The store offers takeout and catering menus featuring simply prepared food, incorporating local ingredients whenever possible. It also preserves the concept of a “general store," with a wide range of offerings such as housewares, toiletries, packaged foods and beverages, including beer. “It was our goal to keep this kind of store alive but make it something more, something that people remembered more for the food than for anything else," Johnson says.
Fork & Anchor's financing came from a combination of friends and family, as well as a bank loan. “We weren't in a position financially to get a space in Brooklyn, nor was it really what we had envisioned," Muellner says. "We starting looking in the South Fork first, but realized that real estate prices were too high. Erin came out to NoFo for the weekend and urged my husband and me to join her immediately. We got there and instantly felt a connection and everything sort of fell into place after that."
The duo transitioned to living and working on the North Fork, 80 miles east of Manhattan, by trying to meet as many people in their new community as possible. Following a regular Saturday yoga class, the now-35-year-old women hit the Greenport Farmers Market to shop stands of biodynamic fruits and vegetables, locally baked breads and pastured chickens and eggs.
"After a few visits to the Browder's Birds farm stand and some chats with one of the owners, Holly, I asked her if they ever needed volunteers," Muellner says. She began volunteering there the next week.
“Because my experience at Browder's Birds made me feel more bonded to the land, I felt that I had a responsibility to serve local, sustainable food to the community," Muellner says. "At Fork & Anchor, we brought in produce from local farms and organic deli meats and began serving it without a big conversation. We let the food speak for itself, and people noted the difference."
Formerly known as Angel's Country store, Fork & Anchor is located on East Marion's main drag, alongside the small town's volunteer fire station and post office. A 19th-century barn on their leased property provides storage space and serves as a weekly distribution center for Fork & Anchor CSA, or community-supported agriculture. From late May through October, people who buy a $695 seasonal share in Deep Roots Farm, located in the neighboring town of Southold, pick up boxes of freshly harvested heirloom vegetables and fruit, along with organic herbs and add-on shares of New York state cheeses and poultry and pork.
In a tribute to Fork & Anchor, voted "Food or Beverage Shop Local Hero 2014" by community members, Edible East End wrote, "These women haven't been out here long, but their dedication to serving deliciously prepared local food and reliance on our farmers has made us feel like they've been around forever." Regulars show love by dropping off buckets of clams and freshly hunted venison for the shop owners' home cooking, along with gifts for Johnson's four-month-old daughter, Greta, born out of a fairy tale meeting on Fork & Anchor's opening day, when local resident Mike Johnson walked in, saw Erin, and proposed marriage a year later.
All year round, seven days a week, the 800-square-foot shop opens its doors to locals who come in for a sunrise coffee, newspaper, egg sandwich or cigarette fix. Weekends and summers bring "city people" refreshed to find a broad selection of local and imported foods, Greenport Brewery growlers, glossy magazines, picnic boxes for vineyard and boat excursions, and a catering menu with inspired offerings like asparagus tips with arugula, Pecorino Romano and lemon vinaigrette.
During the months leading up to the transition from Angel's to Fork & Anchor, Johnson and Muellner sat on a bench outside the country store to observe the habits and preferences of their soon-to-be clientele. They wanted to be sensitive in continuing to serve as a humble convenience store while, at the same time, raising the quality of offerings. In introducing locally roasted, small-batch coffee and organic sliced meats and cheeses, they lost some customers as prices went up, but they also attracted people who had never before stepped foot on the property.
And because they bought an existing business, they already had customers walking in the door on day one. “Our tactic was to keep the store running—business as usual, working through the inventory we bought through the business purchase, while slowly, over the course of a year, phasing out things we weren't interested in carrying and introducing new products and a new menu," Johnson says. "It was important to us to maintain the customer base that had frequented the store for years, and at the same time, pique the interest of those who'd never stepped foot in the store with our new range of products." The pair worked on the store's website and created new signage, but didn't start advertising until the second year, when Fork & Anchor was closer to the original vision.
Fork & Anchor's ongoing challenge centers on the delicate balance between small-town values and overall local resistance to change and the desire to serve visitors who provide most of their revenue. Sales can jump 300 percent from winter to summer, and training and staffing up to 10 employees for a seasonal business proves difficult. As soon as a reliable worker learns the ropes, it's September—time to go back to college.
While the shop is growing, challenges remain. "We did $100,000 more in sales in 2014 than in 2013, and sales have gone up every year since 2011," Johnson says. "That said, so have our costs—costs of goods sold, payroll, equipment repairs, reinvestment back into the business for projects such as launch of product line. We feel good about the direction we're headed in, but we do see the need to do more catering in order to capitalize on summertime volume that can hold us over the winter."
Fork & Anchor's brand extension also includes a product line of condiments. Their first offering—apple-raisin chutney made with local Wickham's Farm fruit and served on Fork & Anchor's signature turkey sandwich—launched in January 2015 and is sold for $11 for nine ounces at their store and at local farm stands. They plan to create two more chutneys and other shelf-stable condiments by the end of this year.
Johnson and Muellner are also waiting on approval for a mobile kiosk at Greenport's nearby Brewer Yacht Yards this summer. The quilted metal trailer, if green-lit, will sell sandwiches, snacks, drinks, newspapers and small provisions that boaters might forget, like sunscreen and soap. "We have a great relationship with the marina," Johnson says. "They appreciate what we've done and approached us to be on-site so that members docking from long sails don't need to be transported into town every hour."
The North Fork community adopted by Johnson and Muellner, like any seasonal seaside outpost, is subject to cresting and falling waves of population. Not long after the railroad to the East End of Long Island was completed in the mid-1800s, allowing farmers access to city markets, the structure that houses their new store was built. It was their vision for the landmark building that inspired their business, rich in history. Progress meets tradition, city meets country. For Fork & Anchor, it's about the delicate balance of constant change.
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