At first glance, Theo’s General Store looks like it’s always been here — the kind of place where you stop in for coffee and leave with something you didn’t know you needed. A jar of small-batch local honey. A coffee table book on Vietnam. A loaf of bread you’ll think about all afternoon. A reason to linger.
But Theo’s is also very intentionally new, as the community will find out soon it opens today, Friday, Feb. 13 at 126 Old Ridgefield Rd. in Wilton Center.
The spot was founded by a young couple who moved to from New York to Wilton in 2024, Jacob Fisher and Casey Romaine. Fisher grew up in Ridgefield, and the two would often come up from their Long Island City home and spend weekends visiting his parents in Connecticut.
They found an historic 1774 home in Wilton they fell in love with, “a gem of a place in Wilton that needed a complete renovation,” Romaine described. Fisher, an artist who creates large-scale site-specific installations, took on the work himself.
“We were spending even more time in this area, planning the wedding and getting everything settled,” she continued. That included getting to know Wilton better, and making it their own.
“Wilton is this funny place where there’s a lot of people here and there’s nothing really going on,” she says. “The people here are amazing… but it just felt like a strange situation to have to go to all these other towns to get, like, a nice cheese maybe, or to get a housewarming gift for someone.”
Theo’s was born from that gap, with the concept of a conventional New England general store to give Wilton residents a one-stop shopping experience with a curated selection of the best the area has to offer.
“We were trying to figure out how we could create a store that took care of several things that we felt were missing,” she says, “and how could we kind of bring that all together in one place?”
The answer was a modern general store — flexible by design, rooted in food, and built to grow with the town.
The couple has created a specialty goods retail store and coffee bar combo that’s meant to marry destination shopping with a community gathering space.
On the display shelves are carefully curated items, including international pantry staples — olive oils, condiments, tinned fish, chocolates and other delicacies; and distinctive home goods and gifts — handmade ceramics, glassware, candles, coffee table books and one-of-a-kind items from local artisans.
Theo’s will also offer a selection of pastries supplied from off-site vendors, including the artisanal bakery Fatto a Mano in Norwalk, and a small seating section for patrons.
Several items reflect the couple’s personal tastes mixed in with local purpose. One of Romaine’s standouts? Japanese specialty condiments.
“One of our favorite spice condiments is yuzu kosho,” she says. “We found this incredible brand that makes small batch yuzu kosho… in a squeeze pouch — easier to use, fun to add to your cooking. Delicious. Just delicious.”
Another favorite is a masa harina corn flour sourced from Mexico. “They’re actually employee-owned, and it’s a B Corp,” she explains. “They source single-origin corn from Mexico to make incredible corn flour.”
Even the coffee tells a story.
“We were starting to think about what could we do that might be a little bit of a different offering,” she says. After traveling to Vietnam, the answer became clear. “They have an incredible coffee culture. The coffee is amazing.”
Theo’s now serves Vietnamese beans sourced from a small, female-owned roaster on the East Coast. “They source their beans from Vietnam, roast them in Philly,” she says — along with Vietnamese-style coffee made with condensed milk. “It’s a delicious drink,” she says.
At the same time, Theo’s is careful not to feel imported.
“What we really didn’t want to do is come in as people who were just living in New York City and just create a store that was just full of things that we loved in the city,” she says. “That is not what we want to do.”
Instead, the goal is to complement Wilton’s existing character — not overwrite it.
“I think there’s so much to be said about having a small town that can still provide enough entertainment and enough retail and enough of what people need without it becoming maybe unrecognizable,” she says. “Change can be great for a town, if you do it the right way… and really make sure you’re connecting with the people that live here.”
That sense of intention runs through everything, from the layout to the product mix. “We kind of designed this to be flexible,” she explains. “If we see that people are really loving hanging out here for a few hours, we can always add more tables… and if it seems like it’s going the opposite way and people just want to come in and grab a bottle.”
The store is named for their son, Theo.
“He’s almost nine months old… so it just felt like we want to put roots down here.”
As Theo’s opens its doors, that plan for connection is already taking shape — through coffee conversations, outdoor seating when the weather warms, and ideas for future events and expanded food offerings.
“It’s all kind of an experiment,” Romaine says. “Testing out what resonates most with people.”