Fresh Faces at St. J Restaurants
The two restaurants at the Creamery Shoppes in St. Johnsbury at Route 5 and Hastings Hill Road have fresh new ownership and a fresh new look. Mike and Laura Heath are the new owners of Ramunto’s Brick Oven Pizza. The Bagel Depot is back in business after a few months’ absence with new owners Jeremy Bressette and Jocelyn Poginy at the helm. Both restaurants are great additions to the local eating scene, with energetic young owners who love what they do.
Bagel Depot’s Bressette says that customers are very pleased to have the restaurant open. “They tell me how happy they are that we’re here,” he says. “We’re going to keep that happy feeling going, with smiling staff, a fresh, clean, interior, and a new menu.” Bressette has worked as a breakfast cook for many years, so he is familiar with how a successful restaurant is run. The Bagel Depot is the first restaurant that he has owned, but he’s determined it won’t be his last. “I want to start small, get a good reputation, and grow from there,” he says.
Bressette and Poginy have made some changes in the layout of the restaurant, relocating some of the counter space and 
freshening the look. The menu includes a wide variety of freshly-made bagels and bagel sandwiches, as well as some new items as omelettes, Belgian waffles, and other specialty sandwiches and salads. A second cash register helps to speed traffic flow during the rush times. “We really try to listen to our customers,” says Bressette. “We want to offer what they want to eat.”
The Bagel Depot opened July 7 as a “soft opening,” but now Bressette is ready to let everyone know about his restaurant. “We’re starting to do a lot of radio advertising talking about how ‘bagelicious’ our food is,” says Bressette. Judging by the steady stream of customers coming through the door, people are already getting the word!
Mike and Laura Heath of Ramunto’s are new to the restaurant business, but they already know the secret to making a great pizza. “We use the best ingredients we can get,” says Mike. “One hundred percent low-moisture mozzarella cheese, dough made from scratch every day – that’s how we make our pizzas even better than they were before.” The Heaths have experienced employees on staff, and benefit from the fact that Ramunto’s is a small Vermont and New Hampshire-based chain of restaurants. “We’ll take good ideas from all the other Ramunto’s locations and use the best of them here.”
Ramunto’s specializes in gourmet pizzas, plus pasta dishes and 13 flavors of wings. “We’ll be adding beer on tap soon,” says Heath, “which will really complement our menu.” The restaurant is bright and airy, with butcher block tables and a brand-new flat-screen television in one dining room for additional entertainment. “We want to be both a great pizzeria and a fun place for sit-down dining,” says Heath. Customers are responding to the changes in the restaurant – Heath reports that in the first month of business, they have already broken some sales records and the dining rooms have been full of satisfied customers!
The Bagel Depot is open Monday through Friday, 6:00 am - 3:00 pm; Saturday 6:30 am - 2 pm; and Sunday 7 am - 1 pm. Ramunto’s Brick Oven Pizza is open Monday through Thursday, 11 am - 9 pm; Friday and 
Saturday, 11:00 am - 10:00 pm; and Sunday, 12:00 noon - 8:00 pm. Treat yourself to a meal at each of these spots and enjoy the great taste in St. Johnsbury’s restaurant community!
If you’ve eaten at Dylan’s for breakfast or lunch, you know their approach to food: as Erin calls it, “hip, innovative, and fresh.” Their new dinner menu will change frequently, but include such dishes as New York strip steak, a charcoal-broiled burger, grilled chicken, curries, and pastas. Dylan’s is now serving beer and wine with both their dinner and lunch menus. They’ve stopped serving breakfasts so they can concentrate on lunch and dinner.
The Northeastern Vermont Development Association is presenting a seminar for businesspeople entitled, “Listening to Your Business,” Thursday, September 16, 2010, from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm at NVDA’s offices at 36 Eastern Avenue in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Led by Ross Hart, Vermont Small Business Development Center Advisor, the workshop will help you evaluate and measure your personal as well as business strategies.
Retail streets change all the time. St. Johnsbury’s own Eastern Avenue houses a wide variety of stores and businesses, from brokerage firms CitiFinancial and A.G. Edwards at the top of the hill, to clothing shops Elizabeth’s Large Size Fashions and Sunshine Boutique down at the bottom of the slope. And in between, there are lots of new things happening – businesses changing hands, new shops and services, stores moving. Let’s take a little stroll up Eastern Avenue…
storefront so she could add more to her business. As the name suggests, Carolyn makes clothing repairs and alterations. She also handles high-end ladies’ resale clothing – “not consignment,” she is quick to mention. Her latest line of business is doing custom reupholstered furniture and custom slipcovers. She also sells home decorating fabrics that Carolyn says are not available anywhere else in the area.
Walking up the street a block or so brings you to a new beauty salon, called Fusion 134. The shop brings together four of the area’s stylists under one roof. Stephen Donna and Angela Hurlbert opened the salon in July, and in October, Suzanne Geoffroy and Lorie Achilles joined them. They handle haircuts, styling, perms, coloring, and nails. According to Suzanne, the response from customers has been great. “We think this is the perfect location for us,” says Suzanne. “We don’t feel new anymore. We feel like we belong here.”
A new owner – Marc LaRose, who is also Assistant Chief of St. Johnsbury’s Fire Department. Marc and his wife Diane own the building, and bought the All About Flowers business from Lallie Mambourg and Sandy Lazerick in October. But the people who create those beautiful flower arrangements are the same, according to Sandy. She and Jessie Stevenson, Marcia Pettigrew, and Ellen Gonyaw staff the shop and provide it with the same level of service they have been proud to offer. “We’re really building our wedding business,” says Jessie, “and we’re improving our website as well.”
All this activity, and we've just walked up ONE side of the street (right-hand side, as you're walking uphill)! Go ahead and stroll up or down Eastern Avenue and discover for yourself what's new there!
Kennedy’s Jewelers is back in business in St. Johnsbury, just a few doors down the street from its old location. The store was one of several businesses affected by the tragic fire that took place July 9, 2009 and devastated two buildings on Main Street that housed three businesses and a number of people who lived in apartments on the second and third floors.
