Bringing back ‘that old-fashioned general store feel’
New owners of Simmons Cafe & Marketplace in Little Compton look to make updates — and add penny candy
LITTLE COMPTON, R.I. — Pamela Alexander had long been waiting for a chance like this.
She and her husband, Jay Alexander, love New England’s Farmcoast region, which includes Little Compton and Tiverton in Rhode Island along with Dartmouth and Westport, just over the border in Massachusetts.
The Alexanders split their time between Westport and Stuart, Florida. And after eyeing historic Farmcoast businesses for years while they renovated their Westport house, the chance to own one finally came this year, when Simmons Cafe & Marketplace in Little Compton was put up for sale.
“When Simmons came up, everything was in alignment,” said Pamela Alexander. “The minute we heard about it, we reached out.”
Nestled in the heart of Adamsville — a village in Little Compton — Simmons is a big part of the small village business district, along with the village Post Office, popular breakfast stop The Barn Restaurant, and Gray’s Daily Grind. Located across from the village baseball field, Simmons has long served as a go-to spot for game day sodas and snacks, or post-game ice cream.
The 2,300-square-foot commercial building dates back to the mid-1800s, but in the 1920s it housed a general store called F.A. Simmons. In 2014, Jennifer Grantham of Westport breathed new life into the place, renaming it Simmons Cafe & Marketplace and offering gift items, glassware, jewelry, coffee and sandwiches, farmfresh veggies, and occasional live music nights and lobster dinners.
Then came COVID. The pandemic took a toll on the business, and Grantham announced on Facebook in March that she had decided to sell.
Less than two months later, on May 18, Alexander became the new owner of both the cafe and the adjacent single-family home, which were listed together for $985,000. (Alexander said they plan to rent out the home.)
This isn’t the couple’s first foray into the hospitality industry. “My husband owns Roger’s Coney Island in Fall River. We’re partners with Gilbert’s Coffee Bar in Stuart, Florida. We have Colab Kitchen, which is a farm-to-table spot in Stuart, and Colab Farms,” Alexander said. “We own a building in New Bedford that’s rented out; there’s three businesses in that. And now Simmons.”
In recent days, Alexander has added Laluna Kombucha, and Warren-based Kristi’s Kraftails, Keystone Farms cheeses, Runamok maple cocktail syrup, and a selection of wooden cutting boards and spoons to the inventory at Simmons. She’ll be rolling out three new menu items soon — hotdogs with Roger’s Coney Island sauce (naturally), sweet sausages, and allfruit smoothies. But she’ll mostly just steady the wheel this summer before undertaking “a significant renovation” and “complete facelift” this fall and winter, she said.
“We’ll update the kitchen, update the infrastructure itself. It’s been around over 100 years and we want to make sure it’s around for another 100,” she said. “We’ll add decks and seating areas, make it more user-friendly with decks and a ramp for families to use the back area and outside.”
The marketplace will get an upgrade as well. “I don’t want to make it something it’s not — there’s the risk of trying to bougie it up too much. It’s not going to be a Cumberland Farms, but it’s not going to be Dean & DeLuca,” she said. “We want local people to be able to get stuff that they might have forgotten on the way home. We want to find that comfortable spot where people go ‘Oooh, I haven’t tried that cheese yet.’ But they’re not going to drop $20 on a wedge of cheese. We want to find that sweet spot.”
There will be more food made from scratch, a deli case filled with house-made salads, sandwiches, and baked goods. Certain favorites, like ice cream from Acushnet Creamery, will remain. And Alexander aims to bring back that old-fashioned general store feel.
“We’re going to bring back penny candy — we get asked for that all the time,” Alexander said with a laugh. “The whole ice cream experience is going to kick up.”
“It has a long history. It’s just been really fun with some of the old-timers coming in. I want to take everybody’s best memories of it and use that,” she said. “We have a list of what everyone really loves, and that will not be changing, I promise.”