We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kate Finio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Our business was born in the spring of 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when going out into the world, even to the grocery store, was scary. We live in a small, tight knit rural community nestled in the hills between Santa Fe and Albuquerque where the closest full service grocery store is a 30 minute drive away. Limited access to groceries, especially fresh produce, has been a challenge in this area far before 2020, but it was highlighted even more at that time. As a response to this, we organized a weekly pop-up farm stand to connect local farmers and producers with our community.

We already had connections with some farmers from living in the area and working in the restaurant industry here, and I cold-called the rest, explaining our goal of increasing accessibility to fresh food in our town. Once I had enough producers to sell us food, a location to set up in town (in the driveway of the local coffee shop), someone else willing to help out (Stella), and a decent amount of interest from potential customers – it was time to start. The farm stand ran from May through October 2020 and was a great success, with a growing following of loyal customers every week who had a sincere appreciation of our efforts.

We were thinking about how to grow and continue these efforts when the opportunity arose to rent a 120-square-foot shop space for a reasonable price, so we signed the lease in early 2021 and set up our brick and mortar where we’ve been ever since.

Kate, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Village Greengrocer is a small grocery store located in Madrid, New Mexico, an unincorporated town in the hilly high desert of northern New Mexico. We prioritize local foods – produce grown at farms super close by (about 10-20 miles away from us), as well as staples of the area: things like pinto beans, green and red chile, tortillas, and pasture-raised beef. We work with one of the last grain mills in the state to source dry goods like flour and blue cornmeal. Over the years, we’ve expanded our offerings to further meet the needs of our community, adding dairy products and other grocery staples that are otherwise unavailable in our area. It has always been important to us to accept SNAP/EBT – since the mission of this project is about access, we want fresh food to be as accessible as possible to our customers.

Being members of the community that we serve allows us to be uniquely engaged with and responsive to the specific food access needs that exist. We work with other community organizations like the Madrid Food Program and the community radio station (KMRD) and host a variety of pop-ups and events throughout the year to meet as many needs as we can. While the Madrid economy is focused on tourism, our customer base is primarily locals. A main focus of this project is rural resiliency – the locals are what makes this place so vibrant and special, and we want to make it a little easier for these people to live out here. All that being said, we certainly welcome visitors as well!

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Stella and I met early on in my time here – I moved to New Mexico on a whim, settling in Madrid in 2017. Stella has been living here since 2012, and we ended up working together at a couple of the local restaurants. In November 2019, we teamed up to cook and host A Perfect Thanksgiving Dinner, where we planned a menu, researched recipes and techniques, made a very detailed week-of and day-of schedule, and divied up duties on a color-coded Google Doc. The dinner was delicious and when we were finished eating, to the surprise of the other guests, we ran a detailed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on the meal. Our friendship was built on working together on food-related projects. We knew we worked well together and had complementary skills and interests, so starting a business together (in this case a little grocery store) felt like a natural continuation.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Running a small business can be extremely challenging! Being a small grocery store, we deal with perishable inventory, customer perceptions of what a “grocery store” is and should be, and a very limited amount of space. While we loved our sunny 120 square foot corner unit, we always had dreams of expanding, but there are a limited amount of affordable commercial spaces available in Madrid.

In the early spring of last year, we were brainstorming about how to address some of these challenges and came up with an idea: we could expand Village Greengrocer by combining our retail space with the neighboring store (in the same building, separated by a wall). In April of last year, we closed for a week and engaged in our first construction project: knocking down the wall between us and the neighboring business, a thrift store. This arrangement allowed us to stay in our original location, while doubling our retail space, sharing overhead costs with another small community-minded business, diversifying our inventory, and bringing more customers in the store.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @villagegreengro
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/villagegreengro

Image Credits

Kate Finio