Leicester Hardware - Leicester, NY

123 Main Street, Leicester, NY 14481

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leicesterhardware?ref=br_rs

Since the early 1900s, 123 Main Street in Leicester, New York has been a hardware store. Anthony Richard Christiano III, best known to area residents as Dickie, purchased the McVean hardware store in the 1940s. He and his family owned and operated Christiano Hardware through 2013.

In 2014, Dale Drew, who owned Drew’s True Value Hardware in Buffalo, New York, was looking to leave the city for the country. He and his son, Doug, starting searching the area for a new location for a hardware store. They found 123 Main Street, which had been boarded up since Christiano’s closed in 2013. After putting in a new floor and setting up the store from the ground up, the store opened on April 1, 2015.

Today, everyone in the Drew family is involved in the business: Dale, his wife Colleen, Doug and his wife, Carrie. Carrie even brings in their five-month-old son, Robert. “At first,” Carrie says, “I worried about bringing [an infant] to a hardware store. Now, I don’t think twice.” Someone in the family is always there to tend to him as they work the business. Carrie says some of the regulars even come by just to check on Robert.

In this small town of 2,200, the Drews know many of the customers by first name. Carrie says Leicester is a sleepy town, somewhat like the fictional Mayberry of “The Andy Griffith Show.” Sometimes people come into the hardware store, not because they need an item, but just to say hello. However, there are also a number of repeat customers, many of them who are renovating older farmhouses in the area. “They’ll walk in and say, ‘Today I’m here for plumbing [supplies],” says Carrie.

Customer service is important to the Drews. They know there are a number of big box stores that stock what they stock and people could go elsewhere. “But we have more than hardware,” Carrie points out. In addition to plumbing and electrical supplies, they have gardening supplies, housewares and items for farming equipment.

As the only hardware in town, customers convey that they like to spend their money at a local, family-owned business. Carrie says the family works hard to give customers what they want. She comments that she learns a lot just by what the customers come in and request.

And, while they knew their location would be “an easy address to remember,” the Drews were careful not to name the hardware store after themselves. “Leicester Hardware,” says Carrie, “had a community feel to it. It’s like we don’t own it, it’s a part of the town.”