Company Shops Market Celebrates First Year Anniversary 

It’s not just a grocery store, it’s a place to eat and it’s also Burlington’s first co-op. Company Shops Market proudly celebrated its first year anniversary this past Saturday.

“As an independent business and cooperative, the first year’s a big milestone,” said Owner Leila Wolfrum.

The market opened last June, and since then, has become extremely popular with the Burlington community.

“2012 has been spectacular,” said Wolfrum. “We’ve had more and more traffic coming in, more and more people coming in. We sparked a little bit of a revolution downtown, there have been, almost a dozen new businesses moved in downtown since we opened.”

More than half the food at Company Shops Market is local, something you can’t find at your everyday grocery store. What’s unique about Company Shops Market is the quality of the food they sell and where it comes from.

“We buy as much local product as we can. Last summer, 60 percent of what we sold in a produce department was local produce,” she said.

Locally grown produce is one of things that has made the co-op successful and its customers were just as excited to celebrate its anniversary.

“There’s so much going on today that’s been really exciting,” she said. “I’ve been really involved in the planning of it; that’s been a lot of fun, but mostly I’m excited to just see the community turn out.”

The parking lot of Company Shops Market was filled with community members and vendors helping to celebrate the small business’ one-year milestone. Attendees were able to sample food, take in art work and get their face painted.

In terms of what lies ahead for the co-op, Wolfrum is not too picky.

“Honestly, I’ll take whatever comes as long as it’s a nice, long future,” she said. “We really are grounded in this community and we want to be a part of Burlington and see the local, healthy, independent side of Burlington grow.”