TOUR: Sherman Marketplace - Sherman, CT

Sherman Marketplace

Owner: Mike Luzi

Opened: 1984 under current ownership

Cooperative: IGA
Location: 15 CT-39, New Fairfield, CT

Photographed: July 9, 2021

This is a supermarket?! Yep, it sure is -- this rustic 7,000 square foot cabin-like building actually holds the Sherman Marketplace, an IGA-affiliated independent store. It's tucked away in a small, very quaint complex holding the town hall, a theater, a bank, and a liquor store.

And the supermarket has been here for many decades, although it's been under its current ownership since only 1984. Still, 40 years is a good long time! See some background here and here. And the only signage on the outside of this store indicating that a supermarket may hide behind the stone chimney and vines is a tiny IGA sign peeking out from behind the treeline, as we see below...

Heading inside, we find the store to be small but complete, with a wonderful small-town character. The cabin feeling continues inside with wooden beams across the store. Oh, and the chimney we see outside? That leads to a fireplace that faces the produce department.

We enter to produce in the front right corner, baked goods in the first aisle, meats on the back wall, deli in the back left corner, and dairy and frozen in the last aisle on the left side.

Sorry for the blurry picture. We can get a sense of the small town feeling here, though! The meat department also has a lot of cheeses and prepared foods in the back. I believe there's more meat cases in the first aisle, but looking across the back wall of the store...

I love the look of this store! It's quaint but not outdated. It has character without being obsolete.

And the best part? You can probably spot it on the back wall of the store...

An original IGA sign still proudly displayed! This is the oldest IGA sign I've seen (and I assume it's authentic and not a reproduction), although we've seen historic IGA signs previously displayed. IGA was formed by retailers in Poughkeepsie, NY and Sharon, CT, which is just 20 miles north of Sherman. Neither Poughkeepsie nor Sharon actually have IGA stores anymore, but Sharon does have an independent called the Sharon Farm Market and Poughkeepsie has a few indies too.

The last aisle has frozen cases in the front and dairy cases in the back. As we can see, many of the fixtures are older, the maintenance here has clearly been excellent.

A look at the deli in the back corner of the store...

And a look across the front-end, which has a wonderful sloping roof of wooden beams over the registers...

That's all for this cool little store! I'm very glad I got the chance to visit it since it's unique and fun. Tomorrow we have another IGA, about seven miles northeast!