5 Questions with… Village Market Manager Nancy Dolnier

It takes a village to raise a market and as the Village Market General Manager Nancy Dolnier should know. From her innate intuition for how much risotto is needed for a special dish at a big event to blowing up birthday balloons, there’s nothing the woman can’t do — and, might I add, she always does it humbly.

For those of you who remember her renowned recipes, “Nancy’s Notes,” this one’s for you.

GMW‘s Lesley Kirschner sat down for a quick interview with Nancy at the place where everybody (or more specifically, Nancy) knows your name or, at the very least your face.

1. Has Wilton always been such a close-knit, family town? As someone with so much community spirit, what advice would you give to newcomers?

Dolnier: Wilton is so different than it used to be. Everybody knew everybody back in the day. I knew everybody’s name and their address and their phone number. It’s changed a lot. So many more people, so many new people … it’s impossible to know everybody’s name but I know faces.

I’m not a person who likes to give advice, I’m sorry. [laughs]

2. A little bird told me this past July/August marked 50 years for you at the Village Market. How have things changed over the decades here in the store? What stands out for you?

Dolnier: Physically, we’ve really changed the layout of things. There used to be a pharmacy and a flower shop next door. From about aisle seven over was the Wilton Pharmacy and Stewart Flowers and, I think in 2001, we took over that space. We paid to relocate both of them. Wilton Pharmacy went to where CVS is now and Stewart Flowers went to their current location.

We were under construction for about six months. Walt Smith who built the original building, he and his family worked on it. So we expanded and that allowed for a great change. We had all new cases. The deli probably doubled in size. The meat department doubled in size. It allowed us to have the double salad bar like we have now… all the things that Peter [Keating, VM’s owner from 1989-2013] had the foresight to believe — we have now.

We put the island where the prepared foods are and the idea was that it wasn’t too high so you could see right into the store. Also, when I started here, people had charge accounts. You would have to go over and pull the file, the sheet with their name on it, and put it in the register and it would tender today’s purchase. And then the dollar got tight and we eliminated those.

But then of course people wrote checks and that’s how I knew everyone’s names. You can’t do that with a credit card.

3. So many young people come to Village Market looking for a first job. It’s such a right of passage for a lot of kids — the application, the interview, learning to be a good citizen, showing up. What advice would you give to parents who are looking to teach their teens a little responsibility? Any words of wisdom?

Dolnier: First off, I would say “hands off.” Let them learn on their own. They need to experience this. Like when a young person is calling out sick for instance, and the mother calls, we always say to her, “Can you let ‘James’ call himself?” to teach some form of responsibility.

Obviously, working has changed. When my kids were in high school and worked here, the requirement was three days a week and one weekend day. Nowadays that’s virtually impossible because kids are so busy. We easily had to triple, if not quadruple our workforce in order to cover our hours because kids just don’t have as much time.

But first and foremost, I would advise parents to let their kids find their own way. And if there comes a time when the parents do need to interact with us, that’s fine. But for the most part, let them figure it out.

4. What are your thoughts and feelings on shopping local and keeping money in our own community? How can people do a better job of supporting the local businesses in town and hitting the pause button before they “add to cart” on Amazon, Target or other big box stores?

Dolnier: Obviously I feel strongly about supporting local and always do my best to support locally because that’s what’s going to keep people like us — like Tom [Sato] at Wilton Hardware; and Liz [Shah] at Signature Style; and Open House — Open House has been here a long time; and Wilton Hardware (in different incarnations).

But it’s so important that you think about your local guy. Yes, maybe you might pay a dollar more but isn’t it worth it to someone who’s going to employ your kid or contribute to your kid’s baseball team?

We’ve always been about community and we support as many community organizations as we possibly can, whether it’s cases of water or sponsorships for Circle of Life or Minks to Sinks… if you spend your dollar here, we’re going to turn around and put it back into the community as with all local merchants.

5. There are few things in life that bring me true comfort — the smell of gasoline, those moist towelettes they hand out on airplanes, and Village Market soup. In a world upside down and often sideways, what brings you comfort and how do you keep things in perspective?

Dolnier: I would say, first of all, it’s years of practice. There have been many, many crises; whether it’s the microburst that put us without power for days and days, or the time we were having our roof repaired and they forgot to put a tarp on it. We had a monumental rainfall during the night and my husband happened to see the water coming in and we were closed for days with all of the flooding.

So there’s been many, many crazy stresses over the years and you just come in and you do what you have to do and show up and get through it. That time we lost power, people showed up at four o’clock in the morning and everybody banded together and put everything into a refrigerated truck.

But I would say the friendships over the years have brought me comfort. And certainly, my kids growing up here, I was always volunteering for PGP [Wilton Youth Council’s Post Graduation Party], cooking for Wilton Children’s Theater. I would help people with their parties and do big events.

During COVID, so many people would say to me, “Nancy, what can we do?” One time Janet Foster came in and answered the telephones and Paige Kellogg and Allison Dunn came in and did the personal shopping. It was a very stressful period. People were lined up and the carts were overflowing and our people did an amazing job and they were really able to pivot on a dime.

There are some people I only know from here, from the store but I know they’d come to my funeral and vice versa. That’s the community connection, the comfort.