We get lots of things in the mail because of the business we run. We ordered one handicapped parking sign last year and you wouldn’t believe the size and quantity of catalogs we have received ever since. One catalog came in a box it was that big. I’m not joking. We get magazines about business in Vermont, about drinks and bars, about the restaurant business. I mention this because in one of these magazines recently, there was an article about how to encourage regular customers to come to your place of business. And it got me thinking and feeling thankful.

The Shoreham Inn has a wonderful, loyal, funny, and did I say wonderful, set of regular customers. We’ve even been doing this long enough that we’ve got regular Inn (as in staying the night) customers too. They are the backbone of this place, they are the reason the tourists or other one-time guests comment that they feel like they have really felt a part of a community while they dined with us. We set out, crossed our fingers, and hoped to create a pub, like an English or Irish pub would feel. But after the 200 year old building and some painting and setting the mood, the real trick was how embraced we became by the people in our community, both Shoreham and the wider local net that we serve. We haven’t taken any training courses in building customer loyalty. We don’t have a customer rewards program. But I thought I should take the opportunity and say thank you in some public forum.

So, thank you regular customers of The Shoreham Inn. Thank you for your patience, your suggestions, your criticisms, your humor, your encouragement, your willingness to be flexible, your understanding of the busy season for us and your ability to put up with longer waits and a little more chaos, your driving through snowstorms to give us some business on quiet winter nights, your offers of dishwashing and of errand-running, your bringing of herbs and vegetables from your gardens, your entertaining our out of town overnight guests, your sharing celebrations with us. We feel lucky, grateful, well-cared for and occasionally just a little bit smug. Thank you.

It’s that time of year again, Addison County Fair and Field Days time. August 10 – 14 are the dates for this year’s Field Days, located just up the road from us, in Addison,VT. This is the granddaddy of Vermont Fairs, the state’s largest agricultural fair and full of all kinds of activities, from carnival rides, cattle judging, tractor pulls, demolition derbies, fried dough, photography contests, maple syrup exhibits, handcrafts, more fried food, food contests, fruits, vegetables, flowers, horse show – you get the idea (and more fried things).

I nurse a secret love of this kind of event, being a Midwest girl at heart with vivid memories of state fairs and the world’s largest pig and live country music and pie contests. I will confess that I have never eaten a corn dog.  Innkeeping life being what it is, I’ve never actually been to Addison County Field Days, but I bug Dominic to take me every year. Partly I feel this experience is missing in his education of life in the US, mostly I just want fried dough and a look at the county’s largest green bean. One day we’ll get there.

So you will have to attend for me; come to Field Days, if you stay here at The Shoreham Inn we promise not to fry one element of your breakfast, so you can indulge to your heart’s content while watching the draft horses or handmowing, riding a ferris wheel and looking at antique farm equipment.