The Vermont Country Store

Full review
My grandmother, who is hitting the big NINE-O this year, was in need of some soft, pure cotton nightgowns that were well made and after searching all over the web, I happened to remember having seen an uncoated paper catalogue with Vermont in the title in my mail some time ago that boasted old fashioned products. After searching through the shopping web sites I finally found the site of the Vermont Country Store.

Their site is decidedly no-nonsense and straight forward (as one might expect any old fashioned Vermonter to be!). The navigation is simple and images don't take long to load as they do on many graphics-heavy sites. The descriptions of the items are clear and to the point and the pictures of the items are good.

I found the nightgowns, and although I felt $40.00 for a simple cotton nightgown was a bit steep, I got two in the interest of my grandmother’s comfort.

The delivery time was very good, and I’ll admit I had no reason to contact customer service so I can’t review that area. The nightgowns were of good quality…they’ve been through the washing machine and dryer a number of times and still look good as new.

On their web site they invite you to tell them about any items you remember from way back when and haven’t been able to find, indicating if they can find them, they may add them to their catalogue. I think this is great.

I recently went back to the web site after receiving an email about their “Yankee Bargains” (basically their clearance section) and browsed around a bit. I found some great Adult Terrycloth Bibs that I thought would come in handy for grandmother’s meal times and when I saw the price was $21.95 each, just for my own information I did a search on “adult terry bibs” on Yahoo Shopping and found almost every other vendor carrying them had them for less than $10.00, in several cases less than $4.00.

Then I noted Brinkman’s meat products on the Vermont Country Store site priced at $14.95 for Chicken, Turkey or Ham and 17.95 for beef…all 28 oz cans. Thinking this might be a nice pantry item I again did a web search and found out that the Brinkman’s company sells the exact same items for less than half the amount VCS does.

Another example is Crown Pilot Crackers…non-Northerners will probably not know what these are but they’re a tradition with New Englanders. VCS sells them 2 boxes for $14.90. You can order them from Gristede’s through Amazon.com for $3.79 a box or from Netgrocer.com for $4.85 a box. Even if you get two boxes from these sellers, it’s still a considerable savings.

Aunt Jemima Whole Wheat Pancake mix?? $2.95 at Amazon (or my local supermarket) for one box, at VCS, $9.90 for two…you see where I’m going with this.

Now, in their defense, Vermont Country Store does sell a number of items you can’t find anywhere else and a lot of people may find them worth any price. My advice is if you do decide to shop with them, do your homework so you don’t spend more than you have to.