{"id":68827,"date":"2016-10-07T21:35:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T03:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-food-market-celebrates-20th-year\/"},"modified":"2016-10-08T03:35:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T03:35:14","slug":"dolores-food-market-celebrates-20th-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dolores-food-market-celebrates-20th-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolores Food Market celebrates 20th year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Taz
Taz and Linnea Vass are celebrating 20 years as owners of the Dolores Food Market.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The catch phrase, \u201cKnow your grocer, know your community\u201d is very familiar to Montezuma County residents.<\/p>\n

They have enjoyed the fresh produce, homemade baked goods, convenient deli, and well-stocked meat counter of the Dolores Food Market for the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

And just as important, they have gotten to know amicable owner Taz Vass, a popular fixture of Dolores, who\u2019s always quick with a comment or joke, and willing to break for insightful conversation or humorous story-swapping with customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a true community store,\u201d he says. \u201cQuality service and products are my competitive edge. I respond to customer requests and stock what they tell me they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

What began in 1996, has become a mainstay in Dolores \u2013 a store where pleasantly surprised tourists return to shop year after year.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t expect such a great store in such a small town. I hear that a lot,\u201d Vass says. \u201cThat\u2019s why I came up with the store\u2019s registered trademark: \u2018Unexpected Gourmet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This year the Vass family \u2013 Taz, wife Linnea, and daughters Sarah and Clare, are enjoying the Dolores Food Market\u2019s 20th anniversary.<\/p>\n

With humble beginnings at a location on Central Avenue, Taz and Linnea quickly realized their combination of basic food goods, practical wares, bakery, and fresh meats and vegetables had hit a hungry market.<\/p>\n

In 1999, they relocated to their current store on Railroad Avenue (Colorado Highway 145), a high-profile location with good parking that catches most, if not all, highway traffic at one point or another.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides our loyal local customers, we get a lot of hunters, skiers, boaters, and in the past 10 years, a lot more mountain bikers,\u201d Vass said. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing it for a lot of years now. It\u2019s a pretty complicated business, like running five or six different businesses at time, so I work a lot of 12-hour days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vasses definitely know their community as well. Taz served on town board for years, started the first farmers market in front of his store, and hosts a student pumpkin-carving display every Halloween.<\/p>\n

When not creating her legendary pies and savory grab-and-go meals, Linnea serves year after year on the Dolores School Board, and is now board president.<\/p>\n

The Vasses credit their employees for the success of the store.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so proud of them. They are like family, and we couldn\u2019t do it without them,\u201d Taz said.<\/p>\n

His store marquee boasts seasonal specials, an occasional joke, or reminder of civic duty such as \u201cRegister to Vote.\u201d On another occasion, actual ballot language made the sign.<\/p>\n

One April Fools Day, it read \u201cWorld Famous Pot Brownies.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a busy life running a grocery store open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, but the hardworking Vasses say they wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to thank our customers for shopping local and for the referrals. It keeps the community thriving, and has allowed us to live here and raise a family,\u201d Linnea said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

family feeds the community<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[338,21,44,13,60],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-enterprises","tag-cortez","tag-dolores","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68827"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}