Beau Mart
Susan Angelini owns a place where, she swears, everybody knows your name.
“We’re like ‘Cheers,’ a neighborhood spot where everyone knows everyone,” said the owner of Beau Mart, an iconic convenience store in South Strabane Township that is more than a conventional convenience store. It is equal parts grocery, deli, kitchen, gift shop, snack stop and lottery outlet, without a chain’s inflated prices or overcooked franks.
Beau Mart even sells milkshakes and the wonderfully retro Bun candy bar – almost everything but gasoline, which it once did. (Pumps, from days of yore, are the reason for the distinctive roof out front.)
Now, after 18 years, Angelini is planning to retire. She recently put the market on the market, listing it with the Cypher Group, headed by Jerry Cypher. The business is for sale, with an option to buy or lease the rest of the 0.78-acre property. A rentable apartment is on the second floor.
A sale at 1075 E. Beau St. would be bittersweet.
“It’s going to be emotional,” said Angelini, 62, who lives in Washington with her husband, Jim. “I’m going to miss people.
“What a great experience. I had never owned a business before, so it’s very satisfying to have had one for 18 years that has been profitable. It’s been a success because of our employees and customers. Our employees make things run smoothly.”
Angelini has nine employees, whom she praises collectively. They tend to a store that is open daily, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the weekend.
She starts earlier than most, and is as versatile as the mart itself. Not only does Angelini own and operate the facility, she deals with suppliers, stocks shelves, runs the register, prepares foods and serves as chef. All salads are made from scratch there; meatballs, hot sausage and pulled pork are homemade.
“Our Beau Dip and chicken salad are two favorites,” Angelini said, adding that she works with 40 pounds of chicken breast a week to make the store’s chicken salad and chicken noodle soup.
Although she has a photo of Beau Mart from the mid-1940s, Angelini isn’t sure when it opened. That shot, which accompanies this article, features a family in front of a car with what appears to be a gas-rationing sticker on the windshield. Esso pumps are in the background.
While growing up in Carmichaels, as a coal miner’s daughter, Angelini didn’t envision herself running a business like this. She wanted to be a Spanish teacher, “but our family couldn’t afford college.”
Instead, she attended West Virginia Career College for a year, then held a few secretarial positions before settling in as an office manager for Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. Angelini worked in J&L’s coal division for 16 years, in McMurray and California.
She didn’t work for a while in between, while raising two sons and a daughter. The three are adults now, but all live nearby – two very nearby. One son is in the second-story apartment, the other in an adjacent house, which the mother owns but is not part of the property. Both have worked at Beau Mart, and the daughter – despite having a full-time job – still does.
Angelini purchased Beau Mart in 1998, which led to a whirlwind opening week that August. Son Jimmy was a shortstop for the Washington team playing in the PONY League World Series nearby.
“We opened the Monday the series started,” his mother said. “It was quite the hectic week to say the least.”
It was quite the rewarding week as well. Besides embarking on an endeavor she would quickly love, Susan Angelini watched Jimmy’s team make a somewhat unexpected surge into the final. The locals, alas, lost to Chinese Taipei.
She has enjoyed these 18 years at Beau Mart, working to satisfy costumers, varying the selections, striving to patronize local suppliers including Joe’s Bakery and Albert’s Meats. Angelini said she has had few problems there, even dismissing the Cameron Road project down the hill as a minor disruption.
Visitors have included a couple of Pittsburgh TV reporters, one for a massive-jackpot lottery story, and a local sports legend from the early 2000s.
“Darius Kasparaitis came in when he was with the Penguins,” Angelini said, referring to a popular Lithuanian American tough guy whose overtime goal won a 2001 playoff series against Buffalo.
“He got a tuna sandwich. I didn’t know who he was. He asked, ‘Do you have Too-na?'”
Out of that “Cheers” moment, she now knows his name.
Follow-up story
Well-versed in culinary arts, Marna Day was seeking a place to pursue her passion. She wanted a shop where she could prepare and sell sandwiches, salads, soups and desserts, and scoured the region. An existing location would have been great, but she was willing to build from scratch.
Marna and her husband, Scott, cruised around until one day, she and her beau headed up East Beau. They pulled into the lot of a two-story building straight out of Dr. Seuss – L-shaped, kind of, and in layers. It was the locally revered Beau Mart.
“That was my first time there,” she said. “Scott asked, ‘Do you want to see the place? It’s for sale.'”
They did more than see it. They bought it.
A new Day dawned July 25, when Marna and Scott Day closed on the World War II-era convenience store. It is at the center of a 3/4-acre tract in South Strabane Township, tucked away from, but near, a bounty of residential and commercial properties: Washington Road, Interstate 70 and the city of Washington.
The sales price was $385,000, according to Jerry Cypher, whose Cypher Group brokered the transaction.
Marna is minding the mart full time, which is fine with Scott, who already had a full-time job. He and brother Steve co-own Day Insurance Agency on East Maiden Street, Washington.
Scott’s spouse is thrilled to be realizing her longtime ambition, after succeeding Susan Angelini as owner. Angelini had been in charge since 1998, but decided to retire once she sold.
“This has so many possibilities,” said Marna, who lives on an Amwell Township farm with Scott and their four children: Emily, 21, and Luke, 19, students at Robert Morris University; and twins Sam and John, 17, rising seniors at Trinity High School, their parents’ alma mater.
Beau Mart has so many possibilities because it has so many identities. It is equal parts grocery, deli, kitchen, gift shop, snack stop and lottery outlet. Shelves are neatly stacked with just about everything but the Eiffel Tower – and there probably is a toy model of that.
Marna plans to vary the status quo a bit, but gradually, perhaps over a few years.
“It will be kind of a slow evolution,” Scott said.
“We won’t change the menu a lot,” she said. “Most of our customers have been coming here for years. We’ll go with what people are used to.”
Favorites include chicken salad, meatball, hot sausage and pulled pork sandwiches; chicken soup; and the distinctive Beau Dip. Angelini made all menu selections from scratch, and Day will continue that tradition.
The name remains along with the signage, and all of Angelini’s employees have been retained. Mart hours are still the same – 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the weekend – and so are the traditional daily specials.
Day, who took culinary classes in downtown Pittsburgh, has plenty of menu ideas. She would like to expand breakfast offerings, including tortes, tarts and quiches; sell naturally leavened bread, one of her specialties; and offer homemade pies.
“Molasses cookies and spiced pecans will become staples,” she said. “I plan to do a lot of cooking and baking at home.”
The Days raise chickens and bees on their farm and Marna plans to sell their honey.
She also would like to expand the kitchen, install a patio in the back and add seating to “have more of a café feel.”
Down the road, of course.
“It’s time and money,” Scott said, stifling a grin.
Two weeks in, Marna, a former Trinity substitute teacher, is still learning her business lessons. She has a top-notch professor in Angelini, who has stayed on temporarily to smooth the transition. Day’s predecessor has passed on her book of recipes and volumes of knowledge.
“This has been a bittersweet experience for Susan,” Day said. “She has been kind enough to show me the ropes, get to know (about 30) vendors. You can tell she took a lot of time to work with these people.”
Day’s workday has been non-stop, and may continue to be so. Besides interacting with suppliers, she stocks shelves, runs the register and prepares foods. She embraces the challenge, and fatigue, though.
“I’m working at least six-day weeks – long days,” she said, smiling. “But that’s OK. I don’t mind working hard. I like to go to bed tired.”
Although she is a relative Beau Mart newbie, Day is gratified by the reception she has received.
“People have been so gracious and welcoming. This is such a learning curve, but everyone is being so patient.”
Being an independently owned grocery – being an independently owned anything – is difficult nowadays, especially with several grocery chains in close proximity. Yet the store continues to survive, and apparently thrive. It has been around since at least the mid-1940s. (Angelini does not know when it opened.)
Day pledges to keep it going.
“Mom-and-pop stores are a dying breed,” she admitted. “But we have people who have been coming here for a long time. You get to know them by name, how they like their sandwich and coffee. It’s a personal touch.
“Susan was here for 18 years. I hope I have that longevity.”