Owner of Corner Store Still Upbeat About Norfolk

By Ruth Melville

Like many similar stores in small New England towns, the Norfolk Corner Store finds it hard to remain profitable throughout the year. In our area alone, the Colebrook Store, which had been in continuous operation from 1812 until it closed in 2007, recently reopened but only for limited hours. The Monterey General Store closed for a while but reopened in the fall of 2012; and the Southfield Store is no longer a general store but a café.

With Fadhl Saleh (top of page), Jamal Al-Kushree runs the Norfolk Corner Store. Photos by Bruce Frisch.

Nothing has come easy for Fadhl Saleh, the Norfolk Corner Store’s present owner, who came to the U.S. from Yemen when he was 19 years old. With the help of his assistant, Jamal Al-Kushree, Saleh has been running the Norfolk Corner Store for about three years. In 2010 Justin Vagliano, who had owned the business for several years, sold it to the owners of the Twin Stops gas station and convenience store in Winsted, who kept the business for only a short time before selling it to Saleh.

When Saleh arrived in the States in 1994, his parents were already living here. He started attending John Jay High School in Brooklyn, but after only a few months his father died, and he was forced to take a job to help support the family. Saleh remembers this time as especially hard. He would go to school during the day and then work in a grocery store in the Bronx at night—a tough life for anyone, much less a teenager new to this country who had just lost his father.

Since then, Saleh has always worked to support his family. For 15 years he was a cook at a restaurant in Avon. His only break from the restaurant business came in 2003, when he moved to Detroit to work in an auto parts factory. He didn’t like the work or the city, and after a few months he came back to the restaurant in Avon. He used money he saved from his years working in the restaurant to buy the Corner Store.

This is his first attempt at running his own business, and he admits that it’s been a hard adjustment. “It’s not like working for someone else, when you can just go home at the end of the day. Now there is a lot of pressure.” Handling the paperwork, stocking the right products and getting through the slow times of the year have all been a challenge.

The challenge is compounded by the fact that he must commute every day from his home in New Britain. He has five children, ages three to 17, including a set of 5-year-old twins. His mother also lives with the family. Jamal has seven children, and he too lives in New Britain. They are grateful that when winter storms prevent them from getting to Norfolk, Kevin O’Connor, a longtime Corner Store employee, is able to step in and cover for them.

Not surprisingly, he has found that the most profitable months are during the busy summer season. Fall is also a relatively active time, but the middle of winter is very quiet. The most successful items the store stocks are cigarettes, newspapers, coffee and snacks. Saleh also makes sandwiches at lunchtime.

Outgoing and enthusiastic, Saleh is determined to make the store a success. “I’ve always liked to work,” he says, “and I’ve always had two or three jobs at once. I don’t like to stay home.” In addition to managing the Corner Store, he continues to cook five nights a week in a restaurant in Newington.

If Saleh can build up his customer base and get a little cash reserve, the first thing he would like to do is redesign the store to make it more attractive and welcoming. He also hopes to upgrade the products he sells. And having lived in New York City and Detroit, he much prefers small-town life to the big city. As he says, “It’s nice and quiet, with no trouble. Good people live here.”