“The Crossroads of the Gourmet Community”

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Litchfield's historic town center is the site for The Kitchenworks & Gourmet Gifts. (Photo credit: Merrill Resch)

Elizabeth Smalley stocks something for everyone at her store.

Litchfield, Conn., boasts one of New England’s most beautiful town greens: a rolling expanse bordered by historic buildings, brick sidewalks, a large black cannon and a graceful Congregational Church.

Elizabeth Smalley’s store Kitchenworks & Gourmet Gifts is housed in one of those historic buildings, along a retail stretch that includes clothing and antique stores, restaurants and the county Courthouse. The picturesque setting draws both visitors and second-home owners.

“We get a lot of tourists and weekenders,” says Smalley.

Smalley’s mix of kitchenware and gifts seeks to provide something for everyone: there is a well-edited assortment including Stonewall Kitchen preserves, tabletop, flatware, kitchen textiles, cookware, cutlery, gadgets, candles and cookbooks, among other items.

Despite the traditional setting of her store, Smalley uses both time-honored and new-fangled advertising strategies to stay in touch with her customer base. She runs a weekly advertisement in The Litchfield County Times, a regional newspaper. She has also turned to Facebook as a way reach customers in a more interactive fashion.

It is part of a plan for the store to stand out as a destination point for visitors in a town filled with destination points, like wineries, parks and lakes.

To that end, Smalley is re-working her website, kitchenworksct.com, to make it more interactive. “Right now it just sits there,” she says noting it simply lists store details.

The new version, which launches next month, will allow visitors to print out coupons, view an updated rundown of events at the store, check out store sales, as well as see what is happening in Litchfield that week.

Smalley hopes by also promoting town events, Kitchenworks & Gourmet Gifts will turn up on the browsers of everyone searching for things to do in Litchfield.

She’s learned from promoting cookbooks on the store’s Facebook page that being interactive helps bring in customers. Each week she posts a recipe from a featured cookbook, and has found that idea has earned her many ‘friends’.

“They say that they love the recipes,” she says. That success led her to enlist her cookbook rep to bring in authors in for book signings, events that are also posted on Facebook.

The point is to provide a connection and experience with the store beyond shopping.

“People see our name and know that we are doing things,” Smalley says of her interactive strategy. “It is so much better than sitting back and waiting for customers to show up.”