Grocery Store Spotlight: Adams Fairacre Farms
By Peter Aaron@Chronogram #HudsonValley
It’s not such a shock that Chronogram readers voted Adams Fairacre Farms their favorite Hudson Valley grocery store. The family-owned franchise, which last year celebrated its 100th anniversary, is beloved for its peerless selection of just-picked produce, fresh meats, dairy items, garden products, and other staples, as well as its knowledgeable, helpful staff and the downhome shopping experience to be found at its Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Wappinger, and Newburgh locations. In addition to the above, among readers Adams also netted the number one slots for fishmonger and cheese shop and carved out a second-place spot in the local butcher category.
“Adams tries to provide a better customer experience along with better-quality products at fair prices,” says Adams’s marketing director, @Wendy_Troncone. “We are known for our produce, but we offer so many other unique and hard-to-find items within all our departments. Customers will constantly comment about how they were so happy to find a grocery item or a plant they have been unable to find anywhere else. Also, many of our grocery items are in our stores because a customer asked us to carry them, so you could say we’ve built our stores based on our customers.”
The building of those stores began in 1919, when farmer Ralph A. Adams and his wife, Mary Rogers Adams, acquired 50 acres of Dutchess County farmland. They soon started selling their fresh produce to local shops, and by the early 1930s the roadside farmstand they ran with their four children was a highly successful area institution. Today the small chain is overseen by Ralph and Mary’s grandsons, Patrick and Steven Adams.
Since the early stages of the COVID-19 situation, Adams has been following local and national reports on the virus and looking to the CDC, the WHO, and other public health agencies for guidance. Its stores were quick to implement the use of face masks, social distancing, and occupancy limits among employees and customers, along with other protocol-compliant adjustments. As the Adams family and their staff and customers look to the relaxing of state retail guidelines, the firm is finishing up expansion renovations to some of its Kingston food departments and looking ahead to the opening of a Middletown location.
“I believe Adams has been around for so long (and an area destination) because we are so customer centric, and because of the hard work of our employees,” says Troncone. “Adams is a family-owned business that doesn’t have a corporate feel, with employees who always seem happy and have stayed a long time. We love to support our community and it is simply good fortune.”
Full article:https://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/grocery-store-spotlight-adams-fairacre-farm/Content?oid=10879025