by Bea Peterson
Call it garish, cluttered, distracting or whatever you like. The best words to describe it are tourist stop and moneymaker. Emil Baker’s Big Moose Deli and Country Store on NY Route 7 in Hoosick has won area newspaper awards for the best deli around and, most recently, made The New York Times Sunday, May 18, 2014, issue with a sketch of the building as part of a portrait of “Classic American Journeys By Road.”
[private]Touting a variety of Vermont made items, many folks that stop in believe they have already crossed the state line. That’s okay with Baker, as long as the travelers stop, grab a bite to eat and purchase what he calls souvenir gifts and items you don’t see in other places.
There’s no doubt about it, the sandwiches and pies are delicious. And many of the food items can’t be found anywhere else in the area.
Expansion
The Deli and Country Store has recently taken over the space that was formerly rented to the Hoosick Post Office. It’s now home to a variety of sweet stuff, including nostalgia candy such as Turkish Taffy, Mary Janes and Teaberry gum. Baker likes full shelves, and the entire building is packed with them.
So is the building next door.Formerly a residence, the space has been turned into display rooms of larger gift items and more unique custom made stuff, said Baker. There is office space that will be used for internet sales, a project Baker expects to launch this fall. All the items have labels with the store’s website on it. Plenty of people have looked at the site, said Baker. Unfortunately they can’t order items from it yet.
He said he has been pleasantly surprised to see that about 80% of the folks buy items to give as souvenir gifts. Many of the larger items folks purchase are for their weekend places, from Vermont to the Poconos.
Though the enlarged parking lot is helpful, it’s still crowded, especially on the weekends, said Baker. But that’s not all bad. “We do more [business] in a month than we did in a whole year when we first opened,” he said. He added that the store has tons of regulars that stop by all the time.
It’s easy to grump that the darn building is in NY State, but Baker points out that all his employees are local and that he donates to local charities such as the Food Pantry and Pumpkinpalooza. Near the end of the school year 16 kids from a HFCS art class came out and painted a bunch of black and white creatures and critters. “They did a wonderful job,” said Baker. And the class received $500 for a field trip. He also noted that NY State gets $90,000 in taxes from the business every year, which, he said, often comes back to the community.
When asked why so many of the critters are painted black and white, his response is simple – “just ’cause I like it.” And there are bears and moose aplenty, inside and outside the buildings.
He is also stock piling old horse drawn carriages. A future project is restoring them though who knows where he’ll put them.
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