Local Staples, Daily Delights
Part breakfast joint, part deli, part prepared-food-to-go spot, part grocery store, part coffee shop, part community hub, Common Variety lives up to its name as a go-to for foodies looking for a, well, variety of goodies. Started by the then-Brooklyn-based duo of Molly Botnick and Tawni Benick, the Montague business sources ingredients from local farms and offers breakfast and lunch, with the possibility of pop-up dinners in their future. Molly's husband David D'Altorio manages operations and the front of the house. Common Variety received financing through the PVGrows Investment Fund earlier this year. We spoke to Molly and Tawni on a recent sunny Thursday morning when the espresso machine was humming and in the cheerful dining room, conversations were flowing.
You opened Common Variety in late October. How has the response has been?
Molly: We've seen a lot of people coming in. The weekends are definitely picking up to be pretty busy, and on Wednesdays on Thursdays, it's a little quieter and we have the ability to let people sit and enjoy and read and do some work and hang out for a little bit longer. In general, everyone's just been super kind. It's been really fun to get to know all of our neighbors and people who have been watching the progression of the building and waiting to be able to come in.
How did you end up moving to western Massachusetts from Brooklyn and choosing this spot outside Montague Center for your restaurant/store?
Molly: My parents live in Haydenville and it had been [my husband] David and my goal to move up here for many years. Working in the service industry and as a chef, I wanted to start my own project. So those two things kind of went hand in hand. And I knew that I didn't want to open something in New York City. That was just a bit too much stress and pressure. So I started looking around at different commercial properties casually two years ago. We looked at pretty much every commercial space available in the valley looking for the right home for us, and that's when we found this space, and it all really coincided very well because I didn't want to do it alone. Tawni and I had worked together for several years in Brooklyn. She hired me at a company called Poppy's in Brooklyn. And that, for me, forged our creative partnership and friendship. We had always kind of danced around the idea of one day doing something. And I got lucky that she was looking for a change and ready for something new, and to make the leap at the same time that I was. And so I convinced her to come.
What are your relative roles and specialties?
Tawni: I do the majority of the baking: the bread for the sandwiches and the pizza that you see on the counter every day that has rotating toppings. And then the pastry program, which right now is mostly baked goods, cakes, pies, muffins. We're hoping that within the year we can start adding in laminated pastries as well. Once we can get a laminator. It's a big piece of equipment.
What is a laminator?
Tawni: It's how you make any sort of croissant dough. Laminating is the process of putting sheets of butter in between sheets of dough. And you have to do it very evenly and it's kind of a long process. It rolls it out for you in a very specific way, in a more even way than doing it by hand. It's an important piece of equipment that you should have if you're trying to do any sort of pastry like that on a larger scale. While Molly's main corner is more of the savory food, we both go back and forth and I think that's one of the things that works so well for us is that we can both do both. We have favorite sides, but we're both constantly in tasting and cooking on both sides of the spectrum. Whereas even if I am doing most of the baking I still very much rely on her opinion about how it tastes or what the flavor is, and vice versa.
Molly: I think that Tawni is an incredibly talented baker. We used to call her the mad scientist because she would come to us with an idea and we'd be like, “That’s the craziest thing I've ever heard, those flavors that I'd never put together.” And then she would bring it to us to eat, and we'd be like, "Works perfectly. No notes. We love it.” [Laughs.] So that's really fun for me, that I always get to learn from her. And particularly with sourdough and all of the flours that we're using, Tawni has a wealth of knowledge in exploring and not being afraid to incorporate flours that are both more nutrient dense and better for the environment. So I really respect that in her, a deep commitment to incorporating different flours, like rye or buckwheat or the ancient grain that we're using, and always including some sourdough so that you're getting more complexity in the flavors. It's more work and it's more costly, but I think that it is something that we're dedicated to offering. She's an incredibly good savory cook as well, and she's the hardest working person I know.
I know you’re committed to supporting local agriculture, and that was part of your fit with the PVGrows Investment Fund financing. Can you talk a little bit about working with local farms and how those products fit into your menu?
Molly: Working in Brooklyn, we were constantly bringing the same products that we use here a couple hundred miles south into Brooklyn. We both worked with Myers Produce [a distributor based in South Deerfield that sources local food products] quite a lot. So we already had a baseline knowledge of the local ag landscape here. Also, my family lives here so we know a lot of these local farms are already. And that was part of the reason we felt like our home was here, because there's such a rich network of agriculture and food. This is just a piece of that puzzle that we felt like was missing, and it's just really beautiful and poetic to be able to go down the road to the fields where you see the food growing that you're getting to use, and then just letting it be beautiful in a lovely environment—that brings us a lot of joy. So, it's all about connection and community and having a place to sit with your neighbors and have a cup of coffee and enjoy a piece of focaccia that has radicchio that we bought from Red Fire Farm or Old Friends Farm or any of these other incredible farms. And we want to see a longevity, a future, in small, local agriculture. Part of that is making sure that people are purchasing their product. And we want to be able to continue to do that.
What would success look like to you?
Molly: Well, I think success is just people continuing to come in and support the business and feel good about not only what they're eating, but where their dollars are going. We hope to be able to grow and continue to hire people and offer jobs to young people, old people, whoever wants to work with us and learn. You know, that's another piece of the puzzle of creating vibrant communities is offering more job opportunities to people who want to live here. So, success to me looks like a business that has a thriving, happy staff and customers that want to come back.
Tawni: And the ability to continue not only what we're doing, but grind upon that and being able to offer more. More things, more different things, you know, having the staff and the manpower to offer more provisions than we can right now and expanding upon that.
Working with the FCCDC and PVGrows Investment Fund: Any comments on how that process went? On our piece of this puzzle?
Molly: We're extremely grateful to have been shepherded through the process. This is the first time that either of us had purchased a commercial property or any property. Or gone through the process of applying for money and raising money. And the amount of guidance that we received and just cheerleading to help us get through, it was just very important to us getting to this place. We know how to cook and we know restaurants. But that aspect of the business was new to us. And so just knowing that we had people in our corner that we could call, even for reference to an accountant or a lawyer. It was an incredible opportunity to have people that we trusted, to be able to pick up the phone and call. And we knew that they were going to pick up the phone and give us their best advice. So yeah, we truly quite literally would not be open or sitting at this table right now if it wasn't for not only the financial assistance, but the educational opportunity that the FCCDC offered us. So were extremely grateful.
Common Variety is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
