CHARLESTOWN — The Charlestown Mini Super may be small, but when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold last March, the village grocery store became a vital community resource.
“I look at what we’re going through right now, and to not have to go into Wakefield or Westerly, to me, is just wonderful,” longtime Charlestown resident Paula Andersen said. “They are so helpful. They have pretty much everything you need.”
Brothers Charlie and Tim Beck have owned the store, known to locals as “The Mini,” since 1981. Open seven days a week, the Mini Super employs about 30 people, and the store has done well during the pandemic with business up by about 30%.
Charlie Beck said that not only did more people come to Charlestown for their necessities, they were cooking at home.
“We’re basically one of the few business that have thrived during the pandemic, simply because the population in town grew quite a bit from people coming in from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, who owned homes and still own homes down here, and because of the change in school and work habits they were able to work from home, and students in those states were being taught from home,” he said. “So the population increased, I would say, pretty dramatically.”
The Becks found themselves scrambling for supplies, and they have ongoing challenges trying to buy what their customers need.
“It still continues,” Charlie Beck said. “Any type of disinfectant, bleaches, anything that the households have needed. … We noticed that right away at the beginning of March and, fortunately, our wholesaler was very cooperative through this, and instead of one delivery a week, we went to two deliveries a week to try and keep up the pace.”
With supplies still so unpredictable, Charlie Beck said he never knows which items will be difficult to find.
“The latest thing that I can’t get my hands on, even through my business, is ricotta cheese. Now who would think that?” he said. “I have to go to various places to buy ricotta cheese. I can’t get it and my wholesaler deals with over 1,500 stores, so they’re not a small supplier.”
Among the residents sheltering in place are seniors who can’t risk going to the store. Carlene Fredette, who works part time at the Mini Super, began delivering food to those customers when her substitute teaching and real estate jobs fell through because of the virus.
“All my playing cards that I was doing were spent, and, of course, I always fall back to Charlie. And I was sitting there one day, thinking about what I’m going to do, brainstorming with a friend of mine, and came up with, ‘Maybe I can do Uber, see if I could get into that,’” Fredette said. “And then I said, ‘Uber? Why don’t I ask Charlie if he wants some deliveries?’ So I did, and he jumped at it.”
The store’s deliveries were an immediate success.
“We filled a niche in our community that we needed to fill, getting groceries to people, and Charlie, he was great,” Fredette said. “He gave me carte blanche. … I did what I needed to do to keep people from coming into the store and feeling safe.”
Town Council President Deborah Carney said the store’s willingness to deliver groceries (and its stock of toilet paper) was a great relief for many residents.
“It’s comforting to know that the people at the Mini Super are working hard to keep people safe, to do what they can to help those that cannot or should not be out and about,” she said. “At the beginning of the pandemic, when you couldn’t find toilet paper and paper towels anywhere, they always had them.”
The store is still delivering, but demand for the service has recently slowed. Fredette said one thing people still seem to be missing is the social aspect of shopping at the Mini Super in person.
“They just take care of their customers like family,” she said. “It’s Timmy and Charlie, who treat the customers like they should be treated.”
This year, as they do every Christmas Day, the Becks opened the store until lunchtime. The ritual is more about thanking their customers than selling food.
“We (were) open Christmas morning,” Beck said. “It (was) a little bit different. We used to give out free eggnog and coffee. Now we’ll do it, but it’ll be in a controlled sense. You come in and you can get your free eggnog. It’ll be in a cup already there.”
