Neighboring West Canal Street storefronts — Catland Vintage and Rosie’s Market & Cafe — to close this month
At Catland Vintage, customers mull over discounted cat glassware, kitty coasters, and feline-shaped lamps
On a sleepy Sunday on West Canal Street, Catland Vintage is full of customers. Wilco plays from a soft speaker as shoppers mull over discounted cat glassware, kitty coasters, and feline-shaped lamps. It’s a place with a lot of distinct character, perhaps taken by most as ‘quirk.’ But the people are warm. And so is co-owner Joe MacAskill from behind the counter, as he takes his time chatting with each patron making a final purchase. It’s one of the shop’s last Sundays open.
The business announced last week that it would soon be selling its final inventory to help the owners start their next chapter. But they aren’t the only business on Canal Street closing. Rosie’s Market & Cafe next door — a cafe and chocolate shop — also announced last week that it will be closing this October.
Catland will be open with large sales through Oct. 2 and Rosies will remain open until the end of the month, officially closing on Oct. 31.
Owner and chocolatier, Emma Rose, said the new owner plans to keep the space a coffee shop and open soon after Rosie’s closes. The new owner will also be taking over the Catland Vintage space next door and will disclose further details later on in the transition.
“Honestly, we probably wouldn't be closing it if we hadn't met an incredible dude who is going to take on the coffee shop and turn it into what I think is going to be the next level for that space,” she said.
As a Rosie’s goodbye, there will be a Halloween-themed farewell bash at the cafe on Oct. 29, with cake, costumes and plenty of chocolate. Emma Rose be there with her mother and sisters, and so will the new owners, who, Rose said, will be keeping their coffee manager Kyle behind the counter. Rose said patrons can get updates about her brand on the company’s Instagram, @rosies.confections.
Though different from any business perspective — one pedaling cat-themed vintage goods, the other CBD-infused chocolates — the two shops have had parallel stories and their owners, a neighborly bond. Both businesses opened as panic over the Covid-19 pandemic waned, with an aim to bring new life, as mirrored by their brightly colored facades, to an otherwise quiet side street off the roundabout.
Owners Joe and Jaye MacAskill repainted the walls a shade of the fixture’s original aquamarine
Joe MacAskill said he and the shop’s co-owner, his wife Jaye MacAskill, first found the space battered and worn, a skeleton of a cobbler’s shop that had been a Winooski fixture for decades. It took them the better part of a year to renovate the space, finding small ways to smile back to the storefront’s history, repainting the walls a shade of their original aquamarine and keeping the original cobbler’s sign up in the window. Twice or so a month, Joe said, someone comes in looking for an expert to fix their shoes.
“It’s kind of a history of this stuff, you know,” he said. “We adopted a cat that had stomach issues, so we’re always going for these places that need the most help. We don’t adopt kittens, and we don’t rent stores that are already ready.”
He chuckled and added that maybe they should — “because it’s a lot of work.”
The MacAskills had packed up their life in San Diego and come to the East Coast, not exactly sure where they would land. Joe said it was happenstance the pair crossed the Burlington-Winooski Bridge and took a right on West Canal Street.
The couple had long been collecting cat paraphernalia — records, porcelain figures, dishes — and, in Catland, found an outlet for their passion.
“We collected cats because they just looked so cool and we both loved cats, and we had two cats and then three cats and then it went down to one and now two. But we knew that there needed to be a hook. We had a band for 10 years so there was always (the thought that) ‘you gotta have a hook.’”
But as newbie Vermonters pedaling a niche product, the couple had no idea what their clientele would look like. Joe said it surprised them how friendly they found their patrons.
“I had no idea it would be this fun. You know, play our music all day and wear what we want. Never had to kick anyone out, but I always thought that could be fun,” Joe said. “Everyone is so nice.”
He said on any given day he leaves work having talked to “25 people, and they were all cool.”
Now, after nearly three years in Winooski, the pair is saying goodbye. MacAskill said their closure is due to the space’s lease ending and the building owners having other plans.
“I’m glad for the two years we had. You know, it’s like a band that only releases two albums. We’re like Nirvana, you know, a couple albums, you don’t get to the point where people are tired of you,” he said.
On that recent Sunday, MacAskill runs the desk with jubilance, but the bittersweetness of final days is palpable. The walls have become barer, the displays thinned out with each discounted catware taken home. There’s no actual cat in the store. But Joe says when people ask, as they often do, he sends them next door to Rosie’s.
“I think we’ve helped each other. I think we’ve moved our hours to what their hours are. We never used to be open at 10 o'clock on Saturday and Sunday, but we’re like, ‘Oh, everybody is at Rosie's that early,’” he says.
The arrival of Rosie’s Market & Cafe on West Canal Street came a few months after the opening of Catland Vintage. Spearheaded by chocolatier and owner Emma Rose and her family, the confections store specializes in ethically produced chocolate and CBD-infused delicacies. Rose said the pause of the pandemic allowed her family to build the Rosie’s brand.
The storefront was originally an art gallery, the owner of which Rose once bumped into and got to talking with, mentioning her family’s hope of one day opening a chocolate shop. When the pandemic hit and the owner could no longer support the space, the landlord asked if he knew of anyone interested. He remembered Emma and the Roses.
“It kind of happened really fast and sudden, but it was great because that's, you know, how things are meant to be sometimes,” she said. “The best things, you're not always ready for.”
Originally from Quebec, Rose grew up on a farm in the Northeast Kingdom where her family would host retreats, often cooking for large groups with produce from their land. Later, when working at a French bakery as a student in Canada, Rose found a passion for producing confections.
Back in the U.S., she and her father traveled the country attending chocolatiering workshops from experts, with a growing interest in the medicinal qualities of cannabis.
“When I started Rosie's confections, it was really with the intention of making CBD edibles,” she said. “And then I started learning more about the history of chocolate and learned about the dark side of chocolate and decided I wanted to try and make a difference and not be so hard into the CBD that I guess was just too small of an audience. And so I decided to start making traditional chocolates as well, and it all evolved from there.”
The Rose family — and cat Rosemary — outside Rosie’s Market & Cafe. Image courtesy of @rosies.market Instagram.
Opening the Winooski storefront marked a new chapter of the brand, one that came faster than the family could prepare for. Rose recalled their barebones opening for Valentine’s Day, “We had flowers, chocolates, plushies, and we just had picnic tables — like a church bake sale.”
But then, over the coming weeks, Rosie’s began to take shape and find its footing as a joint chocolate shop and cafe, selling morning pastries and lattes. Across from the prominent Woolen Mill apartments, it filled the need for a quick breakfast fix at a corner cafe.
“I have to give all the credit for that to my younger sister, Lydia, who really was the barista and coffee manager for the first two-plus years. And the community has been nothing but supportive. It's been really special, honestly.”
The family announced last Tuesday they will be closing the cafe’s Winooski location at the end of October. Rose said the closure was largely because of the difficulties the family has had in sustaining the downtown operation. Though the shop brings in enough revenue to break even, it only manages enough to support one full-time salary for the barista. The hours Rose and her sisters put in, she said, are often unpaid.
Rosie’s Confections Classic Dark Chocolate Truffle with CBD. Image courtesy of rosiesconfections.com
The closure will also allow the Rosie’s brand to expand and experiment. Rose said she has some new recipes in the works and is excited to have more time to dedicate to her podcast, The Coca Pod — a platform to educate listeners about ethical chocolate production from bean to bar. She’s also looking to find an apprentice interested in chocolatiering and encourages anyone interested to reach out.
Rose recalled how back when she first opened shop, the storefront’s facade was gray, which fit. For a while at least.
“And then Catland painted their whole exterior yellow, which looked pretty sad next to the gray,” she said. “So we were like, ‘No, we got to play on that tropical aspect of it.’”
Today, the facade’s rose coloring gives the cafe it’s iconic pop in the downtown sphere.
“It does brighten the block a lot, I think, because it's kind of like tucked away out of the circle,” Rose said. “So it was really, really great to have neighbors that were, you know, just really fun.”
In their two years as neighbors, Rose and the MacAskills have tried to make the corner their own.
“We really love having them next to us,” said Rose. “And yeah, since we've gotten our cat, it's been a lot of fun to just get people, like, running in just to see the cat. She’s definitely very popular.”
She, by the way, is a red cat whose name is Rosemary.
When asked what she’ll miss the most about having the storefront, Rose said, “I think having a hub, a place where people can gather. I think that's going to be what I'm going to miss the most because now we're going back to the virtual community.”
She said her family has been amazed at the way the community has supported them, sentiments parallel to those of Joe MacAskill in the final days of Catland Vintage:
“It’s been unexpectedly awesome.”
For a few more days, you can catch both Winooski storefronts lighting up West Canal Street.
“I think people are sad,” said Joe. “And it’s touching that it’s sad because it was a cobbler. And as good as that service is, and you need it, we painted our building yellow, and it’s a fun place to be, and these guys [Rosie’s Market & Cafe] moved in and they’re a fun place to be. So it kind of added some life to this little corner. And I felt good about it.”
