From fried to fresh
Applegate Farm Market brings new life to an old McDonald’s.
Applegate Farm Market has been a staple in the Canton community for over 30 years. Now, the local farm stand has relocated to a newly renovated, former McDonald’s at Canton Village Shopping Center. “It’s like if Old McDonald had a farm — from fried to fresh!” said Karen Bahre, who owns the farm with her husband, Robert. The couple have run Applegate Farm for nearly eight years and are thrilled for their new storefront.
The Bahres are no strangers to the location either; the property was originally a farm owned by Robert’s grandfather and over time became the shopping center that it is now. Though renovating the former fast-food establishment was not a part of their plan, the couple knew it was the right step.
“We had looked at a bunch of options for a new farm stand. We had friends helping, who would’ve given us places to go and build a place. But with all the restrictions and things that would’ve had to take place to get to the point of actually being in business again, it was going to take awhile,” Robert said.
“We had looked at [this building] before and backed away from it because it would be a full-time business for us at that time, and we knew that. But we revisited and decided this is what we
wanted to do.”
The building’s transformation from a major industry restaurant to mom-and-pop shop happened in the blink of an eye. Karen and Robert quickly began stripping it of its signature red and yellow composition in April and opened its doors by Mother’s Day weekend.
Since then, the Applegate Farm Market has seen success.
With the additional space, the market has expanded to include an abundance of local goods from farm-fresh eggs and native strawberries to Tulmeadow Farm ice cream, Hartford Baking Co. bread and other Connecticut-based products.
“Our main thing is to try to promote as much as we can local stuff, local farms. If you have a product and don’t have an avenue of getting it out there, we’ll definitely give it a shot to help push it along,” Robert said.
“We want to have a store that provides local produce and products to the community, and to be able to do that successfully,” Karen said.
The Bahre family has many plans for the space, including utilizing the drive-thru window and the counter space of the old venue, but all in good time.
“We’ll start with scooping ice cream, get that going at the counter, and then our goal is to do that and move into coffee and some baked goods, eventually have [the café] open,” Robert said.
“We’re going to do this in baby steps. We came from a simple farm stand, like a garage, to this. We don’t want to overwhelm ourselves right away. We don’t want to be bad at something. If we decide we’re going to do it, we want to be as good as we can be at it.”
The process has meant early mornings, late nights and long hours of of labor.
The average day for Robert starts before sunrise as he travels to farms across the state collecting fresh produce for the market. After gathering the goods for the day, he continues renovating parts of the establishment and taking care of managerial tasks of the shopping center. By 9 a.m., Robert is off to begin his other job as a contractor.
At that point, Karen has taken over running Applegate Farm, handling the day-to-day tasks of the business. After closing the store for the day, she returns to the farm to pick produce every night.
The couple admits that working in the new location has been more work than before, but despite the long hours and physical labor, they love it.
“Monetarily you don’t get everything back that you put into it. No farmer gets rich being a farmer, but you can’t think of it in hourly wage.” Robert said. “It’s not a big money item for farmers. It’s a labor of love.”