In the Center of Ancram, a Little Store

Ronan Moloney goes there twice a day for the hearty sandwiches that keep him fueled for boarding and training horses. Max Gunasekera often stops by on weekends when he’s up from New York City to buy his favorite barbecue sauce. Many of Ancram’s construction workers, farmers, and mill workers, are regulars, beginning their days chatting with colleagues over mugs of coffee. It’s also the go-to spot for a local knitting group. 

The Ancram Little Store sits at the intersection of County Route 7 and Route 82, at the heart of town. Sisters Abby Jennings, 37, and Kelsie Reed, 26, bought the vacant building during a silent auction in 2017, and opened their deli and market five years later. Today, they run a bustling, buzzy business, greeting most of their customers by their names.

“The banter is what keeps it going,” Jennings said, adding that the casual atmosphere makes the Little Store welcoming to first-timers as well: “I think it just creates more laughter and they’re not as afraid to tell us what they want.”

Reed is the organizer. She restocks the shelves of locally sourced teas, honey, pickles, and jams whenever she has a minute to spare. She also makes sure that the sodas are replenished multiple times a day and that there’s always a stack of plates and bags behind the counter. 

Jennings is the prepper. A mother of three young children, she makes sure they never run out of anything. She checks inventory and orders daily, rather than buy in bulk, to ensure freshness and avoid waste. On a typical afternoon — the Little Store is open from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m (8 to 2 on Sundays) — she’ll place a call Formisano Bakery in Saugerties for six to eight dozen hard rolls.

Moloney, who owns Kinnitty Capall Stables in Ancramdale, arrived from Ireland around 2002. He has been getting his breakfast and lunch at the Ancram Little Store every weekday for around three years. He said he often asks the employees to just create “something good” instead of ordering off of the menu. They know what he likes.

“They make a good sandwich for a country person,” Moloney said. “You can get a city sandwich, which is much smaller, more elegant, or you can get a big honkin’ sandwich that will fill you up and keep you going all day.”

Before the store opened, Moloney said he would buy groceries and bring a packed lunch from home, which was more time consuming and often costlier. The deli makes it easier and allows him to socialize with other workers at breakfast. His daughter Aoife, 19, recently began working at the store.  

As teenagers, Jennings and Reed both worked at a bagel shop in Red Hook, which they said made them comfortable with breakfast recipes. They were not as confident about lunch food  at first, but they listened to their customers and learned their preferences. 

The menu today includes items that honor some of the regulars. There is The Mayor, a sandwich named after Jim MacArthur, the former Town Supervisor who is called that by many locals. It has sautéed onions, cheddar cheese, pickles, lettuce, mayonnaise, and habanero honey mustard on a grilled hard roll. 

On the breakfast menu there’s The Jimmy, a plate of eggs, home fries, and toast, named after a regular who pushed the sisters to add home fries to the menu. Another popular choice is the Roe Jan wrap — an homage to the Hudson River tributary that flows across the town — which has bacon, eggs, cheese, home fries with chipotle mayonnaise.

On Sundays, there are buttermilk pancakes — blueberry, chocolate chip, and plain — all huge and fluffy. Gunasakere, who works in fashion, has a soft spot for the blueberry cakes. 

“They’re really accommodating about my wife, who is gluten-free,” said Gunasakera, who often picks up breakfast for friends visiting from the city. “They have lots of little odd stuff that you run out of all the time, like eggs or bacon or ice cream.” 

Before their father, Bob, helped the sisters rebuild the place, it was an abandoned building for many years — previously a department store called the Little Store that Jennings remembers visiting as a kid. Since many residents still referred to the building by that name, they decided to keep it. 

Photos of the previous store hang on the wall. So does one of a man the sisters call Uncle Pete, though they have since realized that he is not actually their relative. Their grandfather kept the photo because he liked the frame, Jennings said. After he died, they left it up on the wall, in case someone walks in one day and recognizes him. 

The business has created a sense of community among customers and employees alike, offering a sanctuary during hard times. When it opened in 2022, April Leary, a mother of four, began working there because she felt ready to be out of the house. Five months later, her husband died in a canoeing accident, and she leaned on the sisters for support. “I wouldn’t have been able to get out of bed if it wasn’t for them,” Leary said.

The sisters said they enjoy working in the summer, when the town pool is open, the children’s camp is in session, and the front porch seats of the store start filling up. Reed’s best day at work was three years ago, when Danny Stang, whom she met at her brother’s party a few days before, came in to give her his phone number. They are now engaged to be married in June. 

“The biggest drive for me is I enjoy working for [us],” Jennings said. “It’s ours. It’s something that we’re building and we’re growing. The little sprinkle on top of it is just the people that have come through the door here.”