New General Store Operator Plans For

Old-Fashioned Charm, Modern-Day Menu

By Kaaren Valenta

Peter Leone won’t take over full time operation of the Newtown General Store until January, but the new owner already is collecting historical prints and photographs, autographed 19th century letters, and other memorabilia to fill the walls of the historic building.

“I’m a real history buff,” he said. “This building is one of the focal points of our town. I feel a heavy responsibility to give this building the charm that the community expects, while at the same time bringing in an exciting, modern-day menu.”

A Newtown resident who has owned For Pete’s Sake deli on Route 6 in the Stony Hill section of Bethel for the past six years, Mr Leone purchased the Newtown General Store business from the Nimer family in November.

“I’ve started painting and cleaning, but I really won’t be in here full time until the first week of January,” Mr Leone, 38, said this week in an interview at the store on Main Street. “The Nimers will be running it until that time.”

While his daughters, Heather, 5, and Marisa, 3, played nearby, Peter Leone explained how his family wound up in Newtown.

A graduate of New York Institute of Technology, with a degree in communications, Peter Leone moved to Stamford from Yonkers, N.Y., in 1986 after he and his wife, Mary Ellen, were married. “I was working for Pepsi’s Frito-Lay division as a route salesman,” he explained. “That company really knows how to teach its employees about the business aspects of merchandising. I took a lot of training seminars at the company’s New Jersey headquarters and finally decided that I knew enough about the food business to go out on my own.”

Mr Leone bought a bread route in 1988 and moved to Newtown in 1991.

“I longed for a more country-like place to live,” he said. “My wife likes a city. She works in Norwalk as an underwriter for FM Global, a large business/commercial insurer, so Newtown was as far north as I could persuade her to move.”

His venture into the deli business was a result of the winter of 1993.

“I think there were 16 storms that winter,” he said. “I’d have to get up at 2 am to drive to Stratford to the warehouse for the bread, and then deliver it to stores in Stamford and Darien. The heater in my truck was not working, my feet were freezing, the weather was awful. By the end of the winter I bought a new truck, and the route was doing very well, but I decided six and a half years was enough.”

As part of his job delivering bread, Peter Leone had spent his days going in and out of delis, grocery stores, and restaurants.

“I was able to see which ones were doing well. I kept making mental notes,” he said.

When he saw that Gold’s Deli in Bethel was for sale in 1994, he decided to buy it.

“I had a very rough start,” he said. “Two owners before I bought it, there had been a hepatitis outbreak linked to the deli, and the subsequent owners hadn’t been able to turn the business around. My first year was so difficult that I actually put it back on the market.”

But as the months passed, business started picking up.

“My philosophy is give the people what they want – it works,” he said. “In the beginning I gave away a can of soda with each sandwich. I have a trivia question that I fax out with the menus each night and the winner gets a free soda. I’ve even given away a whole lunch if there was a problem with the service. I don’t want to lose the good will. Bad news travels fast, good news travels slow.”

The Newtown General Store went on the market in August 1999 after Darin Nimer, who was operating it, decided he wanted to open a cigar store in Danbury. Other family members stepped in to run the deli until it could be sold. The Nimer family operated the Hi-Way Market in Brookfield for more than 20 years and own the building that houses the Hawleyville Deli.

The General Store was built during the Civil War. It has been featured in The New York Times and Reader’s Digest, and was once pictured in a Breyer’s ice cream commercial in the 1970s. The bright red building is owned by Robert Hall, a local attorney whose office is located next door to the store.

“My plans are twofold,” Peter Leone said. “I want to bring the building back to a nostalgic 19th century theme. I was on the Internet last night looking for Norman Rockwell-type prints. I’m talking to the Newtown Historical Society. I’ve already got original newspaper headlines and clippings from the 1800s, an 1882 letter from the secretary of the Navy, and other original, dated, hand-signed letters.”

“My other intention,” he continued, “is to have a new, updated menu. I learned a lot at my other place. I try out new dishes and new specials all the time. We cook fresh turkey breast, season and slice it. We don’t buy it already prepared. We cook our own roast beef and corned beef. We make chicken salad with all fresh white meat. We make tuna salad with 100 percent solid white tuna.

“We make grilled chicken sandwiches, lots of wraps, use top loin in sandwiches – not the cheaper sandwich steaks – and have hot dishes like chicken marsala and chicken francaise. We try to keep the prices low by selling in volume.

“I’m always open to suggestions, always ready to try something new,” he said. “That’s the flexibility of being a small business owner – no one is dictating what you can do.”

Mr Leone said his only worry is whether he will be able to find staff for the store.

“I have an excellent staff in Bethel, which is allowing me to take on a second store,” he said. “I have five people there. I hire full time people, not try to operate with part-timers, which means I have to pay a higher wage, but I have employees who are committed to their jobs.”

Mr Leone said he intends to keep the deli open the same hours, 6 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday, and 6 am to 5 pm on Saturday. But he may close on Sundays to give some time off to his staff, and himself.

“I have two little girls and a wife that I need to spend time with,” he explained. “Family is very important.”

After he moved to Newtown, Mr Leone realized he has other family in town. “My mother’s cousin, my godfather, Frank Pitrone, Sr, moved here about 1940 and operated Apex Glass, until his son took it over. Now he’s a neighbor. It’s a small world.”