The story below is from our July/August 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Hanging Rock’s Sycamore Station unites top-notch nosh, coffee, artisanal goods and community under one roof.
Courtesy of Sycamore Station
Maggi Pace built Sycamore Station on her family’s land with a focus on community.
When Maggi and Nancy Pace launched Sycamore Snacks as a food truck in 2022, they always intended for it to be a stepping stone to the dream of opening a store on their family’s property at 1900 Dutch Oven Road just off I-81.
Courtesy of Sycamore Station
Maggi Pace started Sycamore Snacks as a pop-up airstream trailer slinging elevated comfort food.
Under the shade of a grove of Sycamore trees, her airstream trailer developed a loyal following for her playful twists on comfort food eats, such as a blueberry grilled cheese, featuring sourdough slicked with blueberry jam and sandwiched with goat cheese, Swiss, jalapeno and basil, as well as bison meatloaf, made with locally sourced bison from Paint Bank. Now, she and her mother, Nancy Pace (née Hinchee), both Salem natives, will continue their family’s retail legacy by opening Sycamore Station, a modern-day general store offering top-notch nosh, coffee, artisanal goods and a community space for events, workshops and gatherings.
“I’ve known since college that I wanted to do a store in that area. My grandfather had a general store across street,” Maggi says. She’s referring to Hinchee & Hinchee, which Nancy’s grandfather, Raymond Dyer Hinchee, established in the 1920s along with his brother, Roy Hinchee. The general store sold items such as gas, fresh produce, canned and dry goods and paint. There was also a butcher shop on site, and patrons could purchase groceries on a tab and opt to have them delivered to their home. Nancy has fond memories of picking out penny candy at the shop and remembers some folks stopping by to pick up their mail. In the 1950s, Nancy’s father, Jim, and his brother, Lloyd took over. Although Maggi only stepped foot in the store the day it was torn down, she was close to her grandfather, Jim, so a big impetus for Sycamore Station was paying homage to him and her familial ties to the land.
Courtesy of Sycamore Station
Hinchee & Hinchee, the family’s original general store and inspiration for Sycamore Station.
Sycamore Station is divided into three distinct rooms, including a counter-service area where folks can order sandwiches such as turkey-pesto, Gouda-and-sharp-cheddar pimento cheese and a vegetarian sweet potato Reuben, featuring thin sweet potato planks roasted with pastrami spices and layered onto bread with sauerkraut, homemade thousand island dressing and Swiss (gluten-free bread or collard green wraps are also available).
Courtesy of Sycamore Station
Signature Blueberry Grilled Cheese.
Here, patrons can also choose from café snacks like scones and cookies, as well as beverages, including coffee, smoothies, floats and lemon- and orangeade, a nod to the orangeade that Maggi remembers getting as a kid from local institution Brooks-Byrd Pharmacy. Maggi, who graduated from Salem High School and Wake Forest University, worked at Mill Mountain Coffee for four years during her school years. She’s parlaying her barista experience into a roster of iced and hot espresso drinks such as flavored lattes, mochas and cappuccino. The Paces have also applied for a retail on- and off-premises wine and beer license. Maggi imagines folks putting together a six-pack of local brews to take home or snagging a beer to sip on the outdoor patio along with a grab-and-go item, such as pimento cheese and crackers.
Patrons can enjoy Sycamore Station’s drinks and food to go or on site, either at an outdoor picnic table or at tables in the community room. The community room tables fold down to create a 20-foot by 20-foot space that can be rented by the hour for occasions such as bridal showers, graduation and birthday parties and book clubs. A recently booked bridal shower with a tea party theme will also include catering by Sycamore Station, such as charcuterie boards, pimento cheese and cucumber tea sandwiches and an assortment of lattes and teas, served on China sourced for the occasion.
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Courtesy of Sycamore Station
The Sweet Potato Reuben on a collard wrap is a hearty vegetarian option.
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Courtesy of Sycamore Station
Lemon poppyseed scones are among the baked goods on offer.
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Courtesy of Sycamore Station
“Our biggest mission is community building in Roanoke,” Maggi says. “There’s the food, there’s the retail, but we’re hoping people will find a quiet spot to enjoy each other and find community.” She hopes that Salem and Roanoke residents will become regulars and envisions locals and visitors alike stopping in after biking or walking nearby trails, such as Hanging Rock Battlefield Trail or the Hinchee Trail or after visiting Carvins Cove or hiking McAfee Knob.
Courtesy of Sycamore Station
The mercantile area of the store sells a variety of goods from local makers, including pottery, soap, candles, wooden bowls and more.
The community room will also house a lending library and regularly host classes such as tai chi and yoga, a book club by bookstore pop-up Rainy Day Reads and workshops like flower arranging or soap making. Maggi, who also holds a master’s in environmental education from Slippery Rock University, plans to reprise some of the popular kid-friendly workshops she ran through Sycamore School, such as wildflower camp, a water bugs class and a makers’ class, where kids make things like a birdhouse and a bug hotel.
“It’d be nice to have people that are regulars and get to know them and have them feel like this is a friendly space where they can relax and people get to know each other,” Nancy says. (To that end, Maggi and Nancy are adamant about creating an inclusive and safe space for the community; the Confederate flag that flies next to a Civil War memorial behind their building is on private property that does not belong to their family. “I wish they’d just hang an American flag,” Nancy says.)
Another way Maggi envisions building community is by hosting vendor markets on the site, as she did when she ran Sycamore Snacks prior to Sycamore Station’s build-out. “The food truck has been a learning curve of its own, but to get to do markets and meet vendors and kind of make a little community going into our store has been really great,” Maggi says. Once build-out is completed, the field behind the building will provide ample room for hosting future pop-ups and markets.
Courtesy of Sycamore Station
Handmade goods by local artisans make for great gift ideas.
In the meantime, Sycamore Station’s central room is devoted to a mercantile area showcasing a variety of wares from local makers. Look for honey from The Salty Bee; mugs, bowls and spoon rests by potter Cathy Dickerson; hand-poured candles in striking handmade geode vessels by Lulu & Oliver; and hand hewn wooden bowls, mushrooms and apples by Jim Brown, who utilizes found wood from volunteer shifts with Pathfinders for Greenways. The retail space’s walls will have a gallery feel with artwork on display by watercolorist Robin Poteet and landscape photographer Nick Fuller.
“I think my father would be so pleased to see us trying to carry on here,” Nancy says of upholding their family’s retail legacy. “And I have such fond memories of Friday nights—that was our night to shop, and we shopped either here or Green Market in Salem. Just to come and be in this place—it was the candy, the big rounds of cheese in the butcher shop where you’d get a little slice of cheese. It’s too bad we can’t have that anymore but maybe we can have a little bit of that feel here.”
Maggi adds: “Someone can create their new Friday night tradition.”
The story above is from our July/August 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!