Photo/Design by Michael Piazza

It has been nearly a year since the novel coronavirus swept in, reshaping our lives in ways we probably would not have believed if we weren’t actually living this altered reality. Whether you are someone who loves shopping for food or considers it a chore (I admit to both, depending on my mood), the days when we could casually run to the market for whatever we need—no masks, no hand sanitizers—feel like a distant fantasy.

Enter New England Country Mart. The offshoot of produce wholesaler J.W. Lopes, this home delivery service sprang up practically overnight, in the wake of COVID’s arrival, offering relief from the ongoing strain of trying to figure out how to stock the larder—and saving a fourth-generation family business in the process.

New England Country Mart (NECM) was largely conceived of and is run by husband and wife Jeff and Elyssa Kotzen, who live in Wellesley with their two young daughters. Vice president of J.W. Lopes, Jeff Kotzen has worked with his father, Peter, in their family business since Jeff graduated from college in 2006. Peter’s grandfather, who was born in Chelsea, founded the company there in the 1930s. Says Elyssa, “We developed a new identity and an entirely new service virtually overnight to overcome the effects of the virus and the shutdown that touched us very dramatically.” (Full disclosure: I grew up with Peter and remember his father’s trucks occasionally parked in the family’s suburban driveway, but we had not spoken in years until I contacted him for this story.)

In mid-March 2020, Elyssa recalls, her daughters’ elementary school became among the first in the state to close because a parent had tested positive for COVID. At the time, there were no protocols in place, “other than panic,” she notes. A couple of weeks prior, Jeff and his father had been starting to see “a big dip” in business. As the month wore on, Elyssa watched her husband coming home from work increasingly dispirited. “It was scary. It’s not only a family business but it’s our livelihood.”

Peter elaborates, “The first week in March our wholesale customers started to cut way back. At that time, we started thinking about how we could keep this company at least break-even.” With buy-in from all 40 employees, he reduced everybody’s pay. By the end of the month, when the state was in full quarantine mode, business was down about 75%. At that time, he had to lay off 15 employees (all have since been rehired).

Because Jeff goes to work between midnight and 2am, he is usually home by afternoon. When they can, he and Elyssa attend a lunchtime class at a local yoga studio. On a particularly tough March afternoon, she recalls, she told Jeff before class that when it was over they would “zen out for a sec, then go home, sit at the kitchen table and hammer out what a home delivery business might look like, using generations of a family network and suppliers… what we can do using what you’ve already built.” Which is exactly what they did.

Jeff curated a set-price box of hand-selected seasonal produce that included some of the specialty items, like exotic mushrooms, that may be standard fare for the company’s restaurant customers but are less easy for home cooks to find in grocery stores. They sent an introductory email to nearly 200 people, “literally everyone we knew. That was the kick-off to my career in produce and also my career in PR,” says Elyssa, who has an master’s degree in public health, a part-time job managing grants for Child Relief International Foundation and, since last March, has been supervising part-time remote learning for their daughters, who are now in first and third grade.

“It was what we had to do to survive,” says Peter. “When [my father] thought my two brothers and I were capable, he stepped aside. I feel the same way. If they have what I think is a more profitable way to run a produce business, I’m all in.

“The way people took to it was incredible,” he continues. Almost immediately the fledgling effort had 500 new delivery customers, with new hopefuls being added to a waiting list daily. Between March and April, the business grew to 1,000 customers. The wait list swelled to 6,500. Everyone in the family was working around the clock. Jeff’s sister, Alison, who works on the business’s wholesale side, pitched in to help get the new effort off the ground.

Initially the Kotzens were using the J.W. Lopes wholesale ordering system, which was a far cry from a user-friendly retail platform. It took an average of 24 hours to add a new customer. In mid-April Jeff recruited a childhood friend to build a robust e-commerce website. He built it in two-and-ahalf weeks. It went live with 1,200 customers, adding 100 to 200 each week for a couple of weeks, then 100–200 per day, until they got through the waiting list and were able to open the website to the public.

Just as business was really ramping up Peter Kotzen, whom his daughter-in-law describes as “a guiding light and a force on the wholesale side,” contracted COVID (as did his wife) and was out of work for four weeks. “Jeff and Elyssa worked through it,” says the patriarch. “They’re amazing.”

As user demand was growing, NECM was adding products and developing partnerships with other local businesses, many of which were also experiencing downturns. Local seafood purveyor Red’s Best was the first to come onboard; founder Jared Auerbach is a close family friend. Savenor’s and Kinnealey Meats were other early vendors. And they have been joined by local favorites such as One Mighty Mill, Goodnow Farms Chocolate, Nutty Life oat milk and Smith’s Country Cheese, among others. The company now offers 600 products and the list is growing constantly. Over the summer, Elyssa notes, she and her husband “put on our masks and braved some farmers markets” in search of interesting new items. That search led them to Zen Bear Foods BBQ Sauce, Earthy Krunchy Kale Chips, A Seasoned Chef Spice Blends and Jaju Pierogi.

“Many, if not all, of our enhancements have been based on customer feedback,” Elyssa says. “We’ve expanded our organic section,” something the wholesale-only business did not offer. While Jeff is responsible for the majority of product sourcing, frequently the couple learns about new vendors through their customers. “We love the stories of these small businesses,” Elyssa says. “We try to highlight them in our newsletter and social media.

“We have broad New England reach,” she continues. “As much as possible we try to keep it close to home, in the Greater Boston area. A lot of these companies are not in the mainstream market because they’re not big enough. It’s really fun for us to develop the platform to really lift everybody and give everybody a place to share what their life’s work is.” Says Peter, “They’re pretty set on healthy choices, really local.” In the fall, the company began to offer prepared foods like salads, yogurt parfaits and frozen entrees, as well as family dinners, all made by NECM’s in-house chef.

When NECM launched, customers had to buy the set produce box and could add items from the expanded product list. By late April/early May, when NECM was able to open the website to new customers, the company suspended that requirement, making the curated produce box just one of many options, because customers wanted more flexibility. Back in March orders were packed in big potato boxes, because there were a lot of them sitting in the warehouse. By summer they’d upgraded to insulated boxes with individual panels to hold frozen items and others for fragile items. “Everything is packaged carefully to minimize bruising,” Elyssa says. Instead of J.W. Lopes’ large trucks, consumers’ orders are now delivered in new refrigerated vans.

There is a $75 minimum per order and delivery is free in the Greater Boston area, Cape Cod and Rhode Island. The company also just rolled out same-day delivery in select towns. “We’re confident that our prices are comparable to, if not less than, Whole Foods’,” says Elyssa. And feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “We get these compliments,” marvels Peter. “I’ve dealt with restaurants and institutions and prisons. Compliments are few and far between. When you have the public complimenting your product, it’s, like, nobody does that.”

In addition to feeding their customers and saving the family business, the Kotzens are dedicated to helping the community. The company donates fresh produce and other food boxes, depending on need, to the MGH Food Pantry; Newton Public Schools food table at Burr School; Hospitality Homes, which provides housing for families that travel to Boston for healthcare; Health Care Heroes; and SPUR, a multi-generational volunteer organization based in Marblehead. “Much of our outreach comes from customers who tell us about their passion projects,” Elyssa explains.

We may be heading into a difficult winter, but there are reasons to be hopeful that COVID will loosen its grip on our lives. Regardless of what the next few months bring, the people who created New England Country Mart say the new model is here to stay. According to Elyssa, “We want to be another household name on the home delivery side, whatever it looks like post-COVID.”

newenglandcountrymart.com

This story appeared in the Winter 2021 issue.