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There’s more than one good reason to visit A.W. Brown’s, Pet and Garden on Shaker Road in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
Need advice on the right products for your finicky dog or cat? The knowledgeable staff, most of whom are pet owners themselves, can help you parse out the perfect food — and toys and bedding and treats — from the store’s vast selection of choices, including brands such as Nature’s Logic and Primal you won’t readily find elsewhere.
Got a pest problem in your flower or vegetable garden, a sad-looking lawn or a sickly plant? At A.W. Brown’s, there are knowledgeable people on hand to help customers solve their lawn and garden stumbling blocks and pick the perfect nursery plants and lawn amendments to create the outdoor spaces they envision.
Perhaps your pet preferences run to the more exotic, like geckos, ball pythons, tarantulas and turtles. A.W. Brown’s has the food, the equipment and the expert advice to keep your specialty pet healthy and happy.
The same goes for wet pets such as Betas, goldfish, tetras and gourmais; A.W. Brown’s has the fish, plus tanks, feeders, water treatments and more to help you craft a successful aquarium.
And A.W. Brown’s never forgets its roots as a feed and grain store, still stocking the supplies and expertise small local — and backyard — farmers need to care for their small animals. They’ve got the right feed for local varieties of wild birds, too.
You can even pick up a unique gift or card, some specialty or familiar candy, Mrs. Meyers cleaning products or a bee-inspired lotion for your work-weary hands on your way to the register.
No wonder A.W. Brown’s has been a hometown go-to for local shoppers for more than 75 years.
The employees are the experts — and the owners
Mike Burnham, president of A. W. Brown’s, joined the store staff in 2023, helping to guide the operation to an employee-owned business when, after nearly 40 years, owner Tom Wheeler made the decision to retire.
Wheeler had purchased the business from Al Brown and his family in 1985. Al Brown had purchased the business, then known as the Checkerboard Grain Store, from owners Deane Clarke and Joe Cady in 1970. A.W. Brown’s roots go deep in East Longmeadow; a tradition Burnham is working hard to continue.
“We just hit our three-year mark this month,” Burnham said of A.W. Brown’s success in transitioning to employee owned. “Tom wanted the business to continue on after his transition to retirement, so he brought in Teamshares, and what they do is help retiring owners move into employee-owned businesses.”
And it is the employees, many of whom have been with A.W. Brown’s for many years, that Burnham said have led to the successful transition and set A.W. Brown’s apart from other places selling pets, pet food and lawn and garden supplies.
“I think that goes back to that expertise that we have, that you’re unlikely to find in a lot of those bigger box stores, that is what makes us unique, “Burnham said. “People frequently come to us with questions about what they should feed their dog or chickens. ‘There’s this thing on my plant,’ and they bring us a leaf, and we have master gardeners who work here. That’s the level of customer service.”
Burnham said that this culture of expertise even carries over to new staff hires, where knowledge, friendliness and an ability to answer questions are what customers have come to expect.
“When we’re interviewing people to work here, one of the questions that we often ask is, ‘Do you have pets at home?,'” Burnham shared. “If we’re interviewing for our garden section, ‘Do you garden?’ And having, I think, a personal passion for some of these things makes an excellent employee.
“Tom Wheeler set that expectation many years ago, and that, I believe, is why our customers, when they come here, they do expect that’s going to continue,” Burnham said. “We often don’t know just our customers’ names, but the names of the pets they come in with.”
This level of expertise is especially important in the newest addition to A.W. Brown’s repertoire of products and services.
The store has added everything customers need to get caught up in the backyard chicken-raising craze.
“It’s become a larger part of our business. I think it’s also fun. A lot of the employees here have their own chickens. Some of them have their own farms.” Burnham said of the level of chicken-raising advice available at A.W. Brown’s. The store was taking orders for baby chicks in mid-February and planned a Chickens 101 instructional seminar for would-be poultry proprietors later that month.
Educating and entertaining
The Chicken 101 seminar is just one of the upcoming seminars and events A.W. Brown’s has in its calendar for the months ahead.
“The other area where I believe we have a distinct advantage is in our connection to the community and our ability to not just provide a product or service, but to educate and entertain. So, the events are certainly going to be expanding as we move forward, and then we’ll think about new ways that we can engage our community over time,” Burnham said.
Cassidy O’Hara, marketing coordinator for A.W. Brown’s, listed a trio of these educational seminars that were on the calendar for March. Registration for all seminars is available on the store’s website, awbrown.com/apps/pages/events or on its Facebook page at facebook.com/AWBrowns/events.
The first is titled “Feed Your Lawn and Garden,” slated for 10 a.m. on March 7.
O’Hara said this seminar is designed for “anyone who wants to start a garden or prep their lawn and gardens for an enjoyable summer season.
The second, a Pond Seminar, is slated for March 21, at 10 a.m.
“This will focus on helping people to assemble a pond, maintain it and make the outdoor space their own,” O’Hara said, adding that A.W. Brown’s has found many customers have questions about setting up their own backyard water features.
The third seminar in March is their “Grass Seed Seminar,” slated for 10 a.m. on March 28.
This, O’Hara said, is designed to help people plan how to seed their lawn for the spring, summer and fall. “It expands on the lawn portion of the ‘Feed Your Lawn and Garden’ seminar,” from the beginning of the month, O’Hara explained.
O’Hara said A.W. Brown’s has added one more special day to its calendar — a weekly Food Truck Friday, where different food trucks spend from lunch through late afternoon in the store’s parking lot so customers can grab a bite to eat before — or after — they shop.
“People like that we have a different option every week,” O’Hara said. “It’s just a nice extra the company can add for our community.”
O’Hara said customers can check the events tab on the company’s website and Facebook pages to see which food truck is visiting on any given Friday.
Looking to the future
Expanding on the events and seminars — what Burnham called experiential retail — is part of the future plans for A.W. Brown’s.
“People are not going to want to walk through a door, get a product and walk out. You have to give them, I think, a reason to not just go on their phone and place an order.” Burnham said.
Listening to employees, both for ideas on what to add and feedback on customer reactions, is another big part of planning for product additions, seminar suggestions and out-of-the-box thinking.
“That’s what makes an employee-owned business unique, is that you get the perspective of all the employees,” Burnham said. “We actually want to hear from everybody on what they think we should be doing differently and products that we should be bringing in. We meet each week to talk about those things, and I think that creates the kind of culture that people want to work within.”
Burnham said A.W. Brown’s also knows how to play to its strengths- the biggest of which is its pet food selection.
“Most of our competitors don’t have the square footage that we have. We have a very big store, and we keep it well-stocked with all kinds of pet food, all different brands, supplements, supplies, so we do have a very wide selection of products,” Burnham said. “We’ve kind of chosen our lane, and we want to make sure that we can address almost any need within that.”
But Burnham said the store isn’t afraid to try new things, reinventing what had been its grill and outdoor cooking room into a new gift area. The space, he explained, gives A.W. Brown’s room to experiment with what else might attract customers.
“Is it a new product? Is it a new service? What are the other things that our customers and our community might need in this area, and can we provide it?” Burnham said. “And if we choose to do that, can we do it at the same level that our customers have come to expect in everything else we do?”
Combining the willingness to try new ideas and products with buyers who have a keen eye for price and value — and an aggressive loyalty program for repeat customers — has put this longtime business model on a good footing for the future, Burnham said.
“We’ve had three great years, and I expect that to continue,” Burnham said.
A.W. Brown’s, Pet and Garden is located at 144 Shaker Road in East Longmeadow. Hours are Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Phone: 413-525-2115. Find them on the web at awbrown.com/ and on Facebook at facebook.com/AWBrowns.
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