Happy 40th anniversary, Stew Leonard’s!
You’ve come a long way from a couple of milk carton vending machines at the corner of Saugatuck, Riverside and Treadwell Avenues in Westport.
Your latest $4 million expansion is impressive. You’ve added more aisles without changing the store’s footprint — I still can’t figure out how — and introduced new pasta and pizza stations. The bathrooms no longer resemble a third world country.
But I have to know:
How can you sell steak, sushi, pomagranate juice, flowers, Christmas trees and cashmere sweaters, and still call yourself a “dairy store”?
And — speaking of dairy stores — when will you add an apostrophe to the claim that you are the Worlds Largest?
Its been killing me for almost 40 years.
There was a “Clover Farms” vending machine at the corner of Sylvan Road and the Post Road. Wasn’t Clover Farms was the dairy’s original name?
I still can’t get past the way Stew ripped off this customers by short-weighting his products, cheated the state out of taxes, and took money offshore to avoid paying taxes on it.
I will never forget how Stew cheated his customers and developed an elaborate scheme to avoid paying taxes. Sorry, this is not a celebration I care to join.
What other grocery store attracts people from more than an hour away? Maybe Arthur Ave Breads? Best meats and produce around. Congrats!