For more than 200 years, Tuftonboro’s General Store has been the place to grab necessities — and stay connected to neighbors. Most mornings, you’ll find regulars gathered around the store’s worn wooden table, within reach of the coffee pot.
But now, the store’s future — and that morning tradition — hangs in the balance, awaiting a decision from its owner, Dave Dauphinais. The store had belonged to his wife, Erin. Her unexpected death in November from breast cancer made it his.
Erin’s parents had run the store for two decades when she first pitched her husband on the idea of taking it over, back in 2016. He wasn’t enthusiastic.
“I wanted nothing to do with it,” he said. “We were parents of pre-teenagers at the time, and it was a hard no.”
Five years later, Dauphinais was the one who raised the idea again. Their youngest child was finishing high school, and his in-laws wanted to retire.
It was a perfect fit. Dauphinais kept his day job — and became a Tuftonboro selectman — while his wife ran the store.
Erin kept the shelves stocked and the pellet stove going on cold days. She made a space for local artists to sell their works. She left thermoses of coffee on the porch during snow storms for the town’s plow drivers. They had just gotten the town’s approval to serve beer and wine.
And, Erin forged close relationships with her customers, some of whom came every morning for something more than just the coffee.
“You can go to 711. You can get your coffee and your beer. You can get whatever you need at 7-Eleven. But here, it's different,” Dauphinais said, reminiscing on the legacy his wife left behind at the store. “You can get all those things, but you also get the conversations.”
Erin’s loss has devastated her husband and her customers, like Guy Pike, who’s lived in Tuftonboro for 70 years. He serves on the town’s budget committee and the district's school board and lives a half mile from the store. He starts nearly every morning at that table.
“We're a pretty tight knit community, even though we may not visit each other's houses,” Pike said. “But when a fellow needs a hand, there's usually a hand sitting here at the table.”
Recently, it was a conversation at the table where Pike learned Ron LaBranche, another local, needed a spike for the end of his wife’s cane. Pike and LaBranche were recounting that story when Faye Friedrich, another regular, walked in.
“Hello Girl, good morning,” Pike called out to her. “I'm dying for a cherry pie.”
Friedrich called back, “Do you know what? I’ll make you one.”
Pie — and the store — were Friedrich’s way into the community. Before she retired, she visited Tuftonboro on weekends, traveling from Massachusetts.
“I thought (as) a way of endearing myself to the local population, I started bringing pies in every weekend,” she said. It took five years, but she knew she was doing something right when Pike told her he was glad she’d moved to town.
“I was flattered that it only took that long,” she said, “because once you're a flatlander, you're always a flatlander.”
Even as this small band of regulars keeps showing up, much has changed. Not long after Erin passed, the post office — which had called the store home for most of its 200 years — moved out, taking the daily foot traffic with it.
“Since they closed the post office, Tuftonboro doesn't exist anymore. And without this store, it's going to go away even more,” Pike said. “And that would be a tragedy. But I fully understand the challenges that Dave is facing at the moment.”
Dauphinais has decided he can’t run the store without his wife, but he hasn’t yet decided what’s next. He sees three options: Selling the store. Turning it into apartments. Or leasing it.
Selling is his last choice.
“I mean, who wants to be the guy that closes a 200 year old general store? Certainly not me,” Dauphinais said. “And, you know, my wife would come back from the grave if I did that. So I'm trying to honor my wife's wishes and do the best that I can within the parameters of what I'm kind of left with.”
Dauphinais is giving himself a little time to make a decision, but he remains hopeful. He is talking to a couple of people interested in leasing, which would keep the store open and preserve what Erin — and the store’s customers — love most.
