The Melrose Messenger

Buckalew’s Celebrates 10th Anniversary as Main Street Icon

This Saturday, Buckalew’s General Store will be celebrating their 10th anniversary with a daylong extravaganza featuring apple crisp, cider, tastings, and more. The Main Street anchor has gone through a number of changes throughout its 10 years in Melrose, but owner Robin Peevey has always focused on creating fun and building community for Melrosians of all ages.

When Peevey first moved to Boston from Texas, she began catering parties for friends out of her South End apartment. Slowly she grew her enterprise to a storefront in Arlington, then in Davis Square. She described her first business, Salt and Pepper, as “like Buckalew’s, but ahead of its time. No one knew what farm-to-table was then,” she explained, “or southern cooking. They didn’t know what biscuits were! I was just doing what I liked to do,” she went on, “making the food I knew and grew up with.”

Eventually Peevey sold this business and returned to school, focusing on adult non-traditional education. “I worked with people going back to college after a long time,” she said, “first-generation students. I loved it, but as I kept moving higher and higher up the ranks, the more I fell out of love because it wasn’t teaching.”

In 2014, Peevey had been living in Melrose for 8 years. Just as she was beginning to consider leaving higher education, Sweet Thoughts, which was located on Main Street where Jeff Carbone Insurance is now, went up for sale. While it was mainly a gift shop, Sweet Thoughts had a beer and wine license, which Peevey knew would make it easier for the next tenant to apply for their own license. Peevey thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to turn this place into an old-fashioned general store that would be accessible and fun for the whole family?”

After extensive renovations, Buckalew’s opened. It was named after Peevey’s mother, in recognition of the Southern cooking traditions she had passed down to Peevey. This first iteration of the general store was successful, but after a few years, the rent grew too high, and Peevey needed to look for a new storefront.

By luck, the hardware store across the street was closing just then, and Peevey seized the opportunity. Renovations in the new location were completed in May of 2019, with the back area of the former Madison Avenue shop opening for tastings and cooking classes in September. Then, just a few months later, COVID-19 hit.

With several employees unable to work due to health or immunocompromised family members, “it was me and two college students,” Peevey recalled. “We decided to turn the whole place into a warehouse for four months,” she went on. “It was really fun.” At that point, Buckalew’s didn’t have a website with online ordering set up, so they used Jotform to record their inventory every morning - whatever they could get in the midst of supply-chain issues - and they would load beer, wine, and snacks into customers’ cars at the store’s back door.

“That whole first part of COVID,” Peevey recalled, “we would put down the phone, and it would immediately ring again. Everyone was desperate for goods, and to have fun again.” In addition to beer and wine, Buckalew’s sold family fun boxes with ingredients for dinner and toys, games, cards, streamers, and whatever else the staff could find to create a fun experience.

Since Buckalew’s couldn’t use their kitchen for tastings and classes, Peevey retooled the room to use for making prepared food instead. Currently, Buckalew’s offers prepared food, frozen food made onsite, and a range of other food items, drinks, candy, and gifts. “I look for products that are fun and interesting,” said Peevey. “If something makes me laugh, it usually comes into the store.” Peevey explained that she is constantly on the lookout for new ideas for Buckalew’s: “when I travel, I look into stores to see what people are selling. I get inspiration and keep up with trends.”

Peevey sees the store’s 10th anniversary as a moment for reflection and pausing to consider what comes next. “Between COVID and the constant pivots we’ve been doing, I’m a little exhausted right now. I have to figure out how to recharge my batteries, and then we’ll move onto the next phase of Buckalew’s. We’re looking at what people want, what they’ve bought,” Peevey explained, “but it has to be more than just buying things, because that’s boring.”

Some of the proceeds from Saturday's 10th anniversary celebration will go to the Food Drive, an organization that Peevey has partnered with from early on. In return, Peevey will be honored with the inaugural Harvest Hero Award at The Food Drive’s annual Harvest Fundraiser on November 9th. Buckalew’s supports The Food Drive by hosting an ongoing donation bin, holding seasonal food drives, cooking for the Melrose Community Freezer, and donating surplus food every week to the Pantry of Hope, which is located only a block away at the First Baptist Church.

“We often have older customers on a fixed income, and for them $5 is a big deal,” said Peevey. “People don’t always realize it, but there is food insecurity in our community, too.” In different ways, The Food Drive and Buckalew’s both work to bring the community together, helping to ensure that everyone has enough to eat, and providing a space where people can come together and enjoy good food, drinks, and company.

Wherever Buckalew’s is headed next, it’s the community that is at the center of everything that Peevey does. “I see kids coming into the store now, in 5th and 6th grade, who I first saw in strollers. I see people coming into the store - family, friends, neighbors - and everyone knows each other,” Peevey said. “The heart and soul of the store is the families in Melrose.”

Posted October 25th, 2024