New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Bulk food ‘treasure hunt’ expands, more stores planned
As many in Connecticut hunker down for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend amid the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a newfangled foodie store is extending its reach to New Milford and Litchfield County, with the feel of old-time Americana.
BD Provisions features row upon row of barrels topped off with bulk dry food and goods — from staples like flour and sugar, to the eclectic munchies of today like a “habanero crunch” snack mix and dill-pickle peanuts. In addition to allowing customers to purchase precise quantities of food that comes fresher in coming directly delivered fresh from wholesalers, BD Provisions emphasizes a “zero-waste” ethic in subtracting packaging materials from the shopping equation.
If the first-time visitor is tempted to derive “bulk dry” from the BD Provisions brand, the initials actually reference co-founders John Boccuzzi Jr. and spouse Cynthia, who oversee the flagship store in Newtown; and Tony and Tara DiPipa who run a second location in Fairfield.
A third store is slated to open the first week of December at 43 Main St. on New Milford’s town green, the first franchised location under Jen and Steve Clark. Over the next five years, the company is aiming to franchise as many as 100 locations — with that number of entrepreneurs pursuing BD Provisions franchises, according to John Boccuzzi.
He and Tony DiPipa were previously senior executives at one of Connecticut’s most successful exports to the franchising industry: Edible Arrangements, the fruit catering and gift company long based in Wallingford before moving its main office to Atlanta a few years ago.
The idea for BD Provisions hit Boccuzzi in early 2018 on a visit to Naples, Fla., after visiting a store there that displayed a variety of foods for bulk purchase in bins rather than the plastic dispensers installed at many supermarkets.
“The store was busy ... and so I went back the next day and it was the same crowd — a lot of people,” he said. “I said to Cynthia, ‘what if you took the bulk idea and married it up with environmentally friendly, and then elevated it with a Williams-Sonoma look?’
“It’s a modern-day general store — it’s authentic,” he added. “It’s like a treasure hunt.”
Customers serve themselves, filling glass mason jars that they can use to measure portions and exchange them on the next shopping trip for sanitized replacements. The size of the barrels is for visual appeal — they hold several inches of food only at the topmost level, ensuring inventories on display are fresh and preventing any damage from the accumulation of food.
As customers stocked up Wednesday afternoon at the Newtown store in advance of Thanksgiving, Boccuzzi recollected the early days of the pandemic, with BD Provisions closing temporarily last March and store traffic not seeing a rebound until summer.
As the case at supermarkets, customers made a run on flour early on; and sufficient numbers asked about the possibility of the company getting yeast to bake bread that BD Provisions added it to its inventory. Customers weighed 60 pounds of yeast at checkout in April alone, and Boccuzzi recollects lugging bags of flour from out back for customers.
The Boccuzzis and DiPipas remain open to new ideas, whether from customers or others. The dill-pickle peanuts were the result of a Newtown manager purchasing the flavor by mistake for her own pantry, only to find them pretty tasty.
And BD Provisions now stocks package-free soap, after a Unilever employee at the company’s research and development lab in Trumbull reached out with the idea after visit the Fairfield store. The Burlington, Vt.-based Seventh Generation is now working with BD Provisions to develop a system to dispense its home cleansing products.
Boccuzzi said Old Saybrook is one candidate for the next location sometime in 2021. The town is home to one independent bulk-food dispensing option in FoodWorks Natural Market, which also has a store in Guilford. Other independent bulk food stores in Connecticut include Edge of the Woods Natural Market in New Haven; Fiddleheads Food Co-op in New London; and affiliates Thyme & Season in Hamden and The Common Bond Market in Shelton.
Food has been the standout retail category since the onset of the pandemic last March, with grocery sales up 12 percent nationally through the first 10 months of this year, as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
But at the outset, Whole Foods Market packed away its dispensers that allow customers to bag precise portions of pasta, rice, cereal, nuts, candy and other dry foods, while keeping in place its fresh fruit and vegetable bins. The Amazon subsidiary has consistently ranked at the top of an ongoing Ipsos assessment of coronavirus safety practices at grocery stores, with Ipsos dispatching “mystery shoppers” to rate chains on criteria like cleansing, distancing and consistent use of protective equipment.
Under “Reopening Connecticut” rules established last summer, stores are allowed to operate selfservice beverage stations and employee-staffed food stations, without specifying rules on other selfservice options in grocery stores like coffee grinders and soup kettles.
BD Provisions kept employees during the pandemic, with the assistance of financing under the federal Paycheck Protection Program and getting lease relief from its commercial landlords. While the company added curbside pickup, Boccuzzi said the magic in the concept is the experience of perusing bins for untried finds.
“We had a big list — 240 items, but impulse buying was gone,” Boccuzzi said. “One thing we did was a sampler pack, so for $10 you got 10 snacks, nd that would let people try them — and they would buy them on the next round.”