An end of an era
Last RI Benny’s shutting doors for good
SMITHFIELD — Cumberland resident Ron Valiquette recalls biking through North Providence one day several years ago when a tire on his bicycle suddenly blew out.
Instead of panicking, Valiquette realized he was close enough to a Benny's, so he walked with his bicycle to the local retail chain and picked up the necessary items to patch his tire and keep on riding.
“Benny's had a special thing going,” Valiquette said.
“They were like a hardware store with a whole bunch of other stuff … Whether it was home goods, car goods, bike stuff, any time of day that you thought of something that you needed, you'd go into a Benny's and you'd find it.”
After Monday, though, all that will be left to Benny's will be the memories, as the state's final store – on Putnam Pike in the Greenville section of Smithfield – will close its doors, ending a 93year era in Rhode Island. On Saturday, there appeared to be more shoppers than items to purchase inside the Smithfield store, as the shelves had been nearly picked clean, with some items going for up to 70 percent off as the going-out-of-business sale commenced.
The first Benny's opened as a tire stand in Providence in 1924, but grew over the years
to become a statewide institution with more than 30 stores filled with everyday household items. However, the chain announced earlier this year the remaining 31 stores would close. The Carpionato Group last month announced that it would purchase the chain’s real estate in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
Valiquette said that he'd stopped by the Smithfield location on Saturday to see what items they had on sale for his biking hobby, saying “I'm always looking for extra stuff, just in case,” recalling when he blew a tire back in the day but the bright lights of Benny's were there to come to his aid.
“You could find just about anything that you really needed at the last minute and they were competitive, it wasn't like paying through the nose for what you were going to get,” he said. “They took care of you.”
Paul Mercier of Smithfield, who is selfemployed in industrial finishing, said “there's a lot of things that I've come to Benny's for years to pick up for my business.”
“There's a lot of little things that I used to buy from here and I want to see if there's anything left over before it goes under and see if I can get some last-minute deals on stuff that I've been buying for years,” Mercier said.
Saying the store's closure was “tough,” Mercier said that on his short drive over to Benny's Saturday, he was thinking about how nice it would be to have a store similar to Benny's open in the future, to prevent the hassle and headaches that can accompany a trip to the bigbox stores.
“Instead of going to the Home Depot or the Lowe's, where you have to go in there and it's a longer ordeal than just coming to Benny's,” he said. “It's five or 10 minutes and you're out of here. When you go to Lowe's, it's half an hour before you get out of there.”
Calling Benny's “the Band-Aid for your house,” Mercier said the stores had “everything you needed.”
“It had everything you needed and it was pretty easy to find things in here, it's not overly big but it had every little thing that you needed for your house that you could find in one spot,” he said. “It's very handy, it's family- oriented, it's a community. Every store seemed to be a part of their community … You try to support it and try to support your local businesses. It's going to be missed.”
Gina Demarco, also from Smithfield, said she's been a Benny's shopper for 50 years – “As far as I can remember,” she said. What she'll miss the most, she added, was “the local opportunity to shop at a place that provided very good service. It was very handy to come in and pick up things that I needed.”
“I don't think it will be replicated because everything's on such a mega scale now,” Demarco said. “I don't think that it's going to happen because large, large enterprises come in and just monopolize everything.”