FAIRLEE — As Airon Shaw glanced around Fairlee’s newest small business — catching light reflect off shiny vinyl records, glossy ’70s magazine clippings and a bright teal Volkswagen bus — she said she’s embracing the future just as much as she’s honoring the past.
On one hand, the Ninny Goat & Co. owner is building a dream career for herself and a home for her family in Vermont.
“With a business like this, you’re really taking a risk on yourself, and you just pray it works out,” she said. “And it did.”
The cannabis dispensary opened Aug. 8, bringing “new life” to a gas station that had sat empty in downtown Fairlee for about 10 years, said Katie Rader, Ninny Goat & Co.’s assistant manager. Since then, it’s received steady business, and is only expected to grow, she added.
But on the other hand, Shaw, 30, is staying rooted in the past by preserving the legacy of her grandmother, known as Ninny, who inspired the dispensary’s name and ’70s theme.
When Ninny died suddenly from cancer two years ago, Shaw said she knew “something of hers needed to live on forever” — and decided that was her timeless taste. Now, Ninny’s black and white portrait, displayed proudly at Ninny Goat & Co.’s front counter, is just as prominent as the store’s neon retro decor.
Shaw said she wants the shop to be a time machine to her grandmother’s favorite years, complete with Nat King Cole vinyls that Shaw salvaged from a nearby record store and vintage magazines and newspapers she collected from community members.
Shaw said she also seeks to model her grandmother’s kindness as she takes on her new role as a business owner.
“My nana helped everyone. She had a lot of love to give,” Shaw said. “And that’s something I want to do, too, for this community.”
But one of the biggest lessons Shaw said she learned over the two and a half years it took to get her business off the ground was to show that same kindness to herself.
“The path hasn’t been easy,” she said, as she works three full time jobs — running Ninny Goat & Co., working for the Vermont Professionals of Color Network and raising her 10-year-old son, Aidan, as a single mom.
It felt like a fourth full time job to obtain a cannabis retail license, she said.
“The whole process costs a lot, and you need a lot of connections to be able to do it,” she said. “And there’s a chance you could go through the whole process and not end up with a business at the end of it.”
License applicants must build their retail space, install security systems, enroll in business insurance, write a full business plan, complete a background check and more before moving forward with an application, Shaw said. That comes with countless costs that often felt like daunting barriers to opening the store, Shaw said. For example, she said she had to start paying rent for her space in February, six months before her store opened.
The costs don’t stop there. A cannabis retail license — which must be renewed annually — costs $10,000 for retailers and up to $100,000 for other growing and processing roles, according to the Vermont cannabis information portal.
Shaw received some financial aid through the Cannabis Control Board’s social equity program, which waives a percentage of application and license fees. But the program “only takes you so far,” she said, especially considering the high up-front costs of opening a retail space.
The program is open to people who are from a community that has been disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibitions, who have been convicted of cannabis-related offenses, or who are Hispanic or Black, according to Vermont’s Cannabis Control Board. Of the 78 licensed cannabis retailers in Vermont, 14 are listed as members of the social equity program, according to a report from the board.
Shaw said she’s proud to see her sacrifices finally pay off at Ninny Goat & Co.
“You just don’t give up on yourself,” she said. “Because it is really hard, and there’s going to be times you’re not going to want to do it anymore. So you just have to be patient with yourself and the process.”
That commitment connects with Fairlee’s broader goal to revive its downtown area, according to Travis Noyes, who retrofitted the gas station into Shaw’s dream space. Noyes and his family — which has owned Chapman’s General Store in Fairlee for 150 years — have been working since 2019 to save the downtown area from a “downward spiral” of losing businesses, Noyes said.
With a combination of grants, state support, crowdfunding and personal investment, Noyes has repurposed local buildings to create apartment units, a cafe and Shaw’s dispensary. He also renovated the town’s general store to include more space for fresh, local groceries — filling what he calls a “grocery desert” in the rural town.
“With every project, we ask ourselves, ‘how can we make the biggest impact on our small town?’” he said.
For the dispensary project in particular, he said, he wanted to “keep the character, the architectural bones” of the gas station, which had been a staple of the town center for decades. He did, however, replace the roof, floors, insulation and other essential features to ensure the building stands strong for decades to come.
Shaw said she hopes to give back to the community in her own ways, too. She’s already selling local artists’ work at her shop and plans to partner with local farmers to fight hunger in the area once she settles in more.
She moved to the Green Mountain State from her home in Alabama in 2021 to attend Vermont Law School. Although it seems cliche, she said, she “did actually fall in love with Vermont” during her time in school and decided to move here permanently.
Although she misses her hometown family and friends — and the homemade cornbread, rice grits and roast beef made from Ninny’s recipes — she said the move was worth it for the life she has been able to build for her and her son.
“We’re enjoying the perks of living in a bubble that most of the world, this country really, doesn’t know exists,” she said. “There’s better education. There’s clean air. And I’m able to own this business, of course.”
