Marge’s Says Goodbye to Stratford

Lolly Renault walked into Marge’s on Monday in hopes of securing some ice cream for dessert later in the evening.

She was bummed to hear from the owner that the shop – after six and a half years at 400 East Main St. – closed on New Year’s Eve.

“Gee, I was looking forward to some ice cream,” said Renault, who lives in Stratford. “We’re gonna miss you.”

Owner Gerard Sack thanked Renault for her patronage with a solemn nod of the head.

Sack and his wife, Margaret, poured everything they could into Marge’s, he told Stratford Patch before Renault entered.

“We exhausted all of our assets,” said Sack, adding that those resources were both financial and emotional. “We basically worked twice the hours of a normal person.”

When the couple opened Marge’s in 2007, they had banked on a good amount of traffic from nearby Ashcroft, Sack said. But that was never fully realized.

There also was the belief that the location offered a quick sandwich stop for motorists on East Main Street, said Sack, adding that he looked at traffic studies prior to opening that supported this idea.

But as the years went on, the faster it seemed the cars whizzed by, he said. So when the opportunity came to sell the property, Sack said he and his wife, who live in Bethel, took it.

“We had a lot of very nice people over the years,” he said, thanking those especially loyal supporters for the “special effort” they gave to keep Marge’s going.

In what would become a last-ditch move for Marge's, Sack over the summer mailed fliers to new homeowners in town, which offered them a free sandwich if they brought the piece of paper to the shop. He said the initiative garnered "some response."

Sack said there are no current plans to revive the business elsewhere. Sack and his wife ran Georgetown Deli in Redding, Conn., for 17 years before they lost the lease and came to Stratford, he said.

After leaving the shop sans ice cream Monday, Renault told Stratford Patch she is going to miss the “special homemade ice cream” at Marge’s, which comes from Dr. Mike’s in Bethel.

Renault said when her mother was at Atria Stratford, an assisted living community in North Stratford, she would drive across town to pick her up and take her out about town.

“This was one of her favorite places,” she said of Marge’s.