Three specialty food shops came together last week to offer an appetizing open house and an opportunity for Greenwich residents to mingle with food sellers while supporting a local nonprofit that fights hunger.
Made up of Fleisher’s Craft Butchery, Fjord Fish Market, and Greenwich Cheese Co., “The Hub,” located on East Putnam Ave. in Cos Cob, offers a market-like atmosphere that store owners call “unique and cool.”
Fleisher’s, The Hub’s newest addition, may be just a month old in Greenwich, but the idea for the one-stop shopping experience came much earlier.
“I went to Fjord’s opening event, and at the time I was thinking that if RadioShack were to ever go out, it would be the perfect location for us, and how great it would be to have the meat monger, the cheese monger and the fish monger at one location,” Ryan Fibiger, the CEO and butcher of Fleisher’s, said.
RadioShack closed its doors this past summer, making way for the butcher’s fourth location and creating a center in Cos Cob for locally sourced products.
“It’s something you would see a lot of in Europe,” Fibiger said. “It’s a very common thing, and it’s the way people shop. The thing about meat, fish and cheese is that it’s hard to shop for products that are raised without hormones and antibiotics. It’s not something you see up in the suburbs so it’s a really unique opportunity.”
The open house featured food samples from the three eateries with wine tasting courtesy of Cos Cob Liquors. Ten percent of the total sales that night went to Community Plates, a local non-profit group.
With the holiday season here, Fibiger said that he’s proud of his company’s organic process for seasonal cuts.
“We’ve been working on our turkey sourcing for four years, and I think we’re doing something very unique,” Fibiger said. “We have some heritage birds you really can’t find anywhere else and we have organic birds that you really can’t source anywhere else locally.”
Classic dishes for the holidays include a standing rib roast and a crown roast, Fibiger said.
“The unique thing about shopping with Fjord’s, Greenwich Cheese Co. and us is that you can do all sorts of things that are much more custom, rather than classic.”
The Hub offers an alternative choice to supermarkets.
“To me, it’s about people being able to come to a one-stop-shop situation where they are not going to a grocery store and finding the horrible lines and everything that goes with it,” Fibiger said. “It’s about being able to get the best possible product which is the best for you and paying a fair price for it.”
“I think we are the best at what we do, not only in Greenwich but also in Connecticut and the Northeast. I hope people realize that these are literally the best possible stores they could have right in Greenwich.”
