Damaris and Mel Hall know that, when running a business, the unexpected can upset the most careful of plans and survival, if not growth, means adapting to a new reality.
The Halls, who own and operate African-inspired ready-to-eat frozen meal company Global Village Foods in Windsor, have mastered the pivot.
After first getting their business back on its feet after a natural disaster flooded their commercial kitchen and then a worldwide pandemic set back entry into the college dining services market, the Halls are getting ready for their biggest expansion yet, moving Global Village Foods’ headquarters from Windsor into the former Singleton’s Market building on Route 4 in Quechee.
“We’ll be going from about 2,500 square feet to just under 7,000 square feet, more than doubling our space,” Hall said. “We felt this is what we needed to grow.”
The business got its start with the couple preparing foods drawn from recipes from Damaris’ youth in her native Kenya to sell at farmers markets and on the Vermont festival circuit. The Halls then opened the Taste of Africa restaurant in White River Junction before segueing into catering — Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 flooded their commercial kitchen located off Bridge Street just as they moved in — and then launched a line of frozen meals in 2016. And, of course, they’ve been dealing with the pandemic like all businesses have for the past year and a half.
Suffice it to say the Halls have navigated obstacles that might have sent other entrepreneurs fleeing to 9-to-5 desk jobs.
“Challenges turn out to be blessings, and we try to focus on what works,” Mel Hall explained.
The Halls have been operating Global Village Foods out of the former McDonald’s on Route 5 in Windsor for the past five years. Their line of five allergy-friendly (no dairy, eggs, nuts, seafood, sesame or soy products) frozen meals, the majority of whose ingredients are sourced within 250 miles of Vermont, are now sold in 42 Whole Foods locations in the Northeast and 70 natural foods stores and co-ops, including the Hanover Co-op.
Adding sweet relish, Global Village Foods just snagged a NEXTY Award, which celebrates “the most progressive, innovative, inspiring and trustworthy products” in the natural products space, specifically for best new special diet food category for its Ethiopian vegan lentil combo meal.
The company also participated in Everyone Eats, a program funded by federal CARES Act money that paid restaurants and food suppliers to prepare to-go meals for people in need.
“That helped get us through the pandemic,” Hall said of the Everyone Eats program, in which food producers received $10 per meal made as long as they purchased at least 10% of their ingredients from local businesses.
Also now joining the Halls in their business is their daughter, Wangane Hall, who has held positions at arts conference and festival South by Southwest and Apple-owned headphone manufacturer Beats by Dre. A 2014 Amherst College graduate, Wangane is overseeing marketing, including the relaunch of the company’s direct-to-consumer online sales platform.
Singleton’s Market, citing “seasonal difficulties,” closed in 2019 and the building remained vacant until it was acquired in January by Lebanon businessman Ed Kerrigan for $650,000. Kerrigan, founder and former owner of the Jake’s Market & Deli convenience store chain, also owns Jake’s Quechee Market and Squechee Clean Laundromat and Car Wash, adjacent and across the road from the former Singleton’s building.
Ed Kerrigan’s son, James Kerrigan, who runs Jake’s Quechee Market and Jake’s ONE Market in Burlington, said “Mel (Hall) was the first one who contacted us” when they listed the former Singleton’s property as available to rent.
Kerrigan, who said he “first met Mel when he hand-delivered samosas to the market” in Quechee, described Global Village Foods, with its blend of African-oriented food and Vermont roots, as a “good fit” for the building and location along the heavily trafficked Route 4 corridor.
Mel, a 1991 Dartmouth College graduate who majored in economics, said the new Quechee facility, which he hopes to occupy by the second week of September, will expand Global Village Foods’ production capacity to achieve the company’s next stage of growth: the college dining services market.
The company had been working on supplying its line of pan-African meals to college dining halls when the pandemic interrupted those plans, he said. Long dominated by giants with Big Pharma-sounding names like Sodexho and Aramark, colleges are increasingly heeding the call of students for more healthy and diverse menus, an opening that the Halls believe their company is uniquely positioned to fulfill.
“Right now we’re developing a line of products that will hopefully appeal to the college crowd,” he said.
They also plan to sell grab-and-go meals at the new Quechee location, in addition to hosting quarterly events at space centered around African food and culture.
Another advantage in relocating from Windsor to Quechee: Mel and Damaris Hall live “three streets away” in Quechee, a commute that Mel Hall happily expects to take him all of “a couple minutes.”
White River Junction’s China Moon Buffet restaurant, which lost its lease last year after 20 years at The Market Station convenience store and Mobil gas pumps at the corner of Route 5 and Sykes Mountain Avenue, has reopened in the former Crossroads Cafe diner right next to its former location.
China Moon owner and Hanover resident James Chen, who in March purchased the former Greyhound bus maintenance facility adjacent to Station Market from where he operates a warehouse business, reports “we have all our employees back from before.”
Chen is leasing the former Crossroads Cafe diner from Vincent Cantore, owner of Cantore’s Pizza in Glen Road Plaza in West Lebanon, who himself acquired the restaurant from former owner Randy Jacobs in 2017 and operated it as Cantore’s Crossroads Cafe until ongoing staffing issues led him to close it.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
