Cornering the Markets
Food has always been a connection for Seth and Megan Burdick. They met as young adults while working on a farm in western Pennsylvania. He was staying with family members on a dairy farm and ended up working at the farmstand her father ran for about 40 years. During winters, they both worked at the same restaurant (he cooked, and she waited tables).
In 2010, they moved to Cape Cod, where Seth’s family had vacationed when he was growing up. Eventually they worked together at the Cotuit Fresh Market, which they now own and operate along with two other village markets, employing nearly 100 people during the summer.
Megan was the first to work at the Cotuit Fresh Market, commonly called The Coop. “It was right down the road from where we lived, so I walked in one day and got an application,” she said. “It was May, and they were getting busy, and they needed as much help as they could get. They immediately took me in. I knew I liked working with people and it was close and convenient.”
In 2016, Megan became a partner in the business with Rich Pimental, who also owned another market in Dennis. “I think at this point he wanted to focus on one thing, and he gave me the opportunity to become a partner,” she said. In November 2019, after building up sweat equity for a few years, she became the sole owner.
The Cotuit Fresh Market is in a building with a rich history, going back to 1862. The Crocker family operated The Cotuit Cooperative Grocery Company there from 1918 until the early 1980s. The business struggled when a chain opened a supermarket on nearby Route 28.
“I remember going in there when I was little and there was a big video rental section and sometimes there was a pizzeria, sometimes there wasn’t,” said Seth. “Sometimes there was an ice cream shop, sometimes there wasn’t. There was always alcohol, but then sometimes there was milk, but sometimes there wasn’t. Prior to when Rich and Lori leased it, which started in 2009, there were three different operators and they were up and down, up and down. Sometimes it was a good store to go to, and sometimes people in Cotuit called it the Food Museum.”
As new owner, Megan felt some changes were necessary. “We changed it pretty drastically,” she said. The previous owners shut down the deli at 3, even though the store closed at 7, which Seth found frustrating. “The customers would be like, ‘Well, you’ve got bread and you’ve got the chicken salad right here. Can’t you just put them together for me?’ ‘Nope, sorry, I can’t do it.’ So immediately we started leaving everything open all day long, which was big for business.”
They started to offer a hot dinner special in early 2020, first once a week, then nightly. “It’s been the same the whole time,” said Seth. “You come in and you get as much as you want, and it’s by the pound, and we make it fresh every day. Monday’s meatloaf. Tuesday is chicken pot pies. Wednesday is lasagna [meat and vegetarian] and eggplant. Thursday is Thanksgiving dinner. Friday is barbecue, which is a bunch of different stuff. Saturday is pot roast and Sunday is corned beef and cabbage.”
It turned out to be lucky timing. The COVID pandemic started, and every restaurant was closed for three months.
“It was scary at first,” said Megan. “I thought, oh my gosh, no one’s leaving their houses. This is going to be horrible. We just took over the business. What’s going to happen?
“But a lot of people would come because it was smaller than the supermarket, so they weren’t as afraid to go to a place like ours. It even brought people in from outside of Cotuit. When the restaurants were closed, if they didn’t feel like cooking, they could come get dinners and we would bring it out to their cars for them, so they didn’t have to interact with anybody. What did they need right then? A little bit of comfort.”
The Burdicks have slowly expanded their business, first by opening Popponesset Fresh Market in an underutilized storefront in New Seabury in 2022.
“It’s a unique area down there – extremely seasonal,” said Megan. “A lot of money and a lot of people who want to have a good time and don’t want to leave that area,” added Seth.
The market hadn’t had a consistent operator and needed some upgrades in shelving and refrigeration. “It had a bad reputation of having high prices and nothing in it,” said Megan.
“We got the deli reopened and we started to make friends with the people down there,” said Seth. “They realized that it wasn’t going to be empty, and it was going to be fairly priced and it was fresh stuff. Year one was okay, then year two was good, and this year was better.”
Also in 2022, they took over the concessionaire business for Cotuit Ketteleers games. “The games are a lot of fun and we create a fun environment at the concessions,” said Megan. In addition to the ballpark staples – hot dogs, burgers, popcorn, ice cream and so on – they offer what they call the dugout dog.
“It’s based on something I saw on TV,” said Seth. “There’s this drug store in Georgia, one of the old-time soda shops, and they had this thing called a scramble dog. They’d take two hot dogs on buns and cut them up and put them in a fry boat, and then they would add chili and ketchup and mustard and oyster crackers and chopped pickles and that was it. So I thought that would be cool. We sell a lot of them.”
In April 2024, the couple, who married in 2012 and have an 11-year-daughter, Theodora, took over the space in Mashpee Commons that had been home to Rory’s Market, and opened the Mashpee Fresh Market. Running two year-round markets and two seasonal businesses is a long way from Megan’s start as an entry-level employee at The Coop.
“I’ve always been a quick learner, and I had Rich, who was really good at teaching me the ins and outs of retail,” she said. “Basically, the customer comes in and tells you what they want, and you just go ahead and do it. Once you learn the community and you learn what they want, then it comes very easy.”
Megan is the owner of the businesses and Seth jokes that he has no title and works for free. But it’s pretty clear that the secret to the success of the Fresh Markets is their collaborative spirit.
“I mainly am administrative, so I take care of all the paperwork,” said Megan. “My name is on everything, so I have to sign all the checks, but we work really well as a team.”
“In Popponesset, for instance, at the end of the summer when all of our college kids go, it was just Megan and I and a couple of other people, so we made sandwiches all day,” said Seth. “We both do merchandising when it comes to figuring out where things are going to go and what we’re going to sell.”
“Especially when you’re filling a 4000-square-foot store, it’s kind of daunting, and we both have different ideas,” she said. “But it’s good to have more than one perspective about how it should look and what should be where.”
“I find it unbearable to do it by myself,” he said. “If you don’t have anybody to bounce your idea off of, you don’t know if it’s a terrible idea. Then you could go through all this work of moving all this stuff around and then be like, ‘Wow, that’s so stupid. Why did I do that?’”
In the summers, Megan spends a lot of time at the Popponesset Fresh Market. This year they both were in Mashpee often, making sure the new outpost was running the way they wanted. “Since this is so fresh, we’re still trying to work out what’s working and what’s not working,” she said.
Each of the three markets has its own vibe. “Cotuit is a world of its own,” said Megan. “Everyone goes in there just because they just want to say hi or grab something quick. We’ve got it down over there because it’s been around the longest.” Even the building is different, with its low ceilings and uneven floors.
The Popponesset Fresh Market is more tourist-based. “There’s weddings every weekend, so you’re seeing different groups of people every week,” said Megan. “You have the people who live there all summer long and the people who live there year-round, but you see a lot of new faces every week. They’ll get everything they need for the week – their groceries, their laundry detergent, their alcohol – and then they remember, ‘Oh, we can get sandwiches before we go to the beach today,’ and then they come back. So, it’s a little different there than in the other two places for sure.
”“I’ve definitely noticed that the Mashpee store has captured a lot of new people that I’ve never seen before,” said Seth. “Popponesset and Cotuit, there was a lot of interchange. People come here to walk around the Commons. You never know who you might snag, once they come in and try something that they enjoy, they’ll be back.
“The customers who were accustomed to Rory’s, there’s still a lot of what they’re looking for. We’re not organic, but we have a lot of nice groceries that are kind of specialty groceries, but not exorbitantly expensive. We’re still trying to figure out what the Mashpee customers want. They’re just not accustomed to us being in this spot.”
The constant among the markets is the Burdicks’ quest to build a relationship with customers. “That’s our whole thing,” said Seth. “When we started operating The Coop, we were there every single day, all day. It was like our house and the people there were like our family. There’s a lot of other places you could go, so the service is what counts because people like to be treated like human beings. If you want to go and be ignored, you can go to a supermarket. Word of mouth is the most reliable way for us to get new customers. If somebody I trust tells me that something is good, then I’m almost guaranteed to go and try that.”
Seth recalled that they moved from Pennsylvania to Cape Cod “because farming is hard, and not just physically hard, but making a living hard.”
“I would say this is equally as hard,” Megan quickly responded.
“The roadside stand with the stuff that we grew is similar to this,” he said, “in that you bring something to a place, and you sell it to your customer and try to make relationships with the customers so that they come back.”
“That’s the most important part,” said Megan.
Bill O’Neill got his start in the communications industry delivering the Cape Cod Times on his bicycle. When he was a bit older, he was the lifestyle editor at the Times. As a freelancer, he writes about healthcare, pop music and other topics. He lives in Buzzards Bay and enjoys biking, hiking and kayaking.
Mashpee Fresh Market
32 Market Street, Mashpee Commons
mashpeemarket.com
Cotuit Fresh Market
737 Main Street, Cotuit
cotuitmarket.com
Popponesset Fresh Market
259 Shore Drive, New Seabury
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