Victory Garden General Store: finding a niche through nostalgia

Victory Garden General Store: finding a niche through nostalgia

by LeeAnna Tatum

Old friends meeting regularly for coffee and companionship, homemade foods and handmade crafts, candy sold by the piece and toys that operate without batteries, a place for community, workshops, conversations that go deeper than mere formalities, a sense of roots, connection and purpose.

Are you feeling nostalgic yet? Are you remembering a place from your younger days or perhaps a time and place that you only ever heard talked about by parents or grandparents?

In our world of instant gratification, fast-paced technology, busy lives and commercialism is there room for such a place? Is it a relic of times past that no longer holds any value for us today? Or do we in fact yearn for some of what those “good ole days” had to offer?

There is something to be said for walking into a store that is stocked with merchandise that can’t be found elsewhere. To buy a gift for someone you love that was made with care by someone within your own community. To greet the person behind the counter as a friend and to know that the money you spend there is helping keep that person in business.

Victory Garden General Store in Sylvaniais just such a place.

It’s a place where friends gather to stay in touch over a good breakfast and a hot cup of coffee. A group of regulars meets up every Friday to keep up the close camaraderie they developed while caring for a mutual friend through her battle with cancer which she ultimately lost.

Not wanting to lose the circle of fellowship they had developed around their friend, they found a new meeting place at the general store. The atmosphere was homey and welcoming, the perfect environment to foster their connections to each other and to the broader community as well.

It’s a store with strong ties to the community. A place where local artisans can sell their unique pieces. It’s a place where shoppers can get a gift for just about any occasion, pick up some groceries and buy a casserole or fresh baked bread for dinner. It’s the kind of business where relationships are developed, conversations are cultivated and time just slips into a slower pace - shifting gears as you pass through the doors.

Lisa Guidos, a Sylvania native, opened the store a little more than a year ago. An only child, she was heavily influenced by her grandparents and spent many youthful hours listening to them recount stories of their depression era childhood.

To her ears, the tales her grandmother told of her many siblings and their time spent growing their own food was almost magical. And through those stories, she herself gained an appreciation for and connection to the food she ate.

The store is named after the victory gardens of World War II when citizens were encouraged to grow and produce as much food for themselves as possible, so commercial food production could go toward supplying the troops. Lisa wants to evoke that sense of self-reliance and personal connection with food.

As a girl, she would tag along with her grandfather to the local general store and listen in as the old men sat around drinking coffee and shooting the breeze. It was that sense of a warm welcome and a comfortable atmosphere that inspired her as she brought her own general store to life.

But Victory Garden General Store, and others like it, is so much more than a nostalgic nod to our collective past. It plays a vital role in today’s local economy by providing that retail space for craftspeople, farmers and other producers to get their products in front of consumers.

Lisa not only stocks products from local farms, but she also uses those products as ingredients in the food she prepares there. By using local ingredients, she provides another avenue of introducing these farms and products to local consumers.

Lisa spent time as the market manager for the Statesboro Main Street Farmers Market. And though she loved her work there, she longed to have local food options available in her own hometown. Not only does her store carry items from some of the vendors at the market, but she also serves as a pick-up location for the Market’s online order-to-go program.

Lisa also uses her store as a venue to host community events and is especially interested in offering kid-friendly workshops. She believes that it is important for children to understand where their food comes from and to develop a connection with the earth so they will grow up with a sense of appreciation, respect and responsibility for it.

Our small rural towns throughout Southeast Georgia would benefit from business owners who follow Lisa’s lead and help bridge the gap between our local producers and consumers. One of the key ingredients our current local food systems lack is convenience. By providing a retail space for producers and a convenient shopping experience for local consumers, our rural food systems can become even more sustainable.

A visit to Victory Garden General Store is a little bit like stepping through a time warp, taking you back to what we often think of as simpler times. But more importantly than connecting us to the past, it’s also a place that could lead the way into the future of sustainability.