What is the Stew Leonard’s story?
My grandfather, Charles Leo Leonard, started Clover Farms Dairy in Norwalk in the 1920s. State-of-the-art for the time, the dairy pasteurized and bottled milk which it delivered fresh each day on trucks with plastic cows that "mooed" for neighborhood children. My father, Stew Leonard, envisioned a retail dairy store where children could watch milk being bottled while their mothers shopped in a farmer's market atmosphere. Opened in 1969, the original store carried eight items. With three Connecticut locations (Norwalk, Danbury, and Newington) today, my siblings and I have expanded our offering to include meats, fish, produce, bakery, cheese and wine. Each store carries only 2,000 items, sourced from local farmers and vendors and chosen specifically for their freshness, quality and value.
What F&B trends are you presently observing in Connecticut?
No. 1, our customers want to know where their food is coming from. Locally sourced produce, meat and dairy have become increasingly important to our shoppers, and signage throughout our stores communicates the names of supplier farms and ranches. The current national farm-to-table movement is a big part of our history here at Stew Leonard’s.
How can groups visiting Connecticut experience Stew Leonard’s?
We are not your regular grocery store—The New York Times called us the "Disneyland of Dairy Stores." We have costumed characters greeting families, singing and dancing animatronics, and Stew’s Little Farm petting zoo at our Norwalk and Danbury stores.
We also offer Stew’s University, a customer service seminar based on our philosophy of "Take good care of your people and they in turn will take good care of your customers." Our first seminar group flew from England on the Concorde! Since then, we have welcomed more than 10,000 groups from around the globe, ranging from major brands like Citibank, McDonald’s and Exxon to local hospitals and insurance groups.
I would also suggest visiting the wonderful local farms and wineries we buy from, like Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, Bishops Orchards Farmers Market & Winery in Cheshire and DiGrazia Vineyards in Brookfield.