FAIRLEE — As Airon Shaw looked around Fairlee’s newest small business — where light reflected off shiny vinyl records, glossy magazine clippings from the ’70s and a bright teal VW bus — she said she was as excited about the future as she was honoring the past.

On the one hand, the owner of Ninny Goat & Co. is building a dream career and a home for her family in Vermont.

“With a business like this, you really take a risk and just hope it works out,” she said. “And it did.”

The cannabis dispensary opened on Aug. 8, breathing “new life” into a gas station in downtown Fairlee that had been vacant for about 10 years, said Katie Rader, assistant manager of Ninny Goat & Co. Since then, sales have been steady and they only expect growth, she added.

On the other hand, 30-year-old Shaw remains true to the past, preserving the legacy of her grandmother, known as Ninny, who served as the inspiration for the pharmacy’s name and ’70s theme.

When Ninny died suddenly of cancer two years ago, Shaw knew “something of her had to live on forever” – and decided that this was her timeless taste. Today, Ninny’s black-and-white portrait, proudly displayed on the counter of Ninny Goat & Co., is as striking as the shop’s neon-colored retro decor.

Shaw said she wants the store to be a time machine to her grandmother’s best years, complete with Nat King Cole records that Shaw rescued from a nearby record store and old magazines and newspapers she collected from community members.

Shaw said that in her new role as an entrepreneur, she also tries to model herself after her grandmother’s kindness.

“My grandma helped everyone. She had a lot of love to give,” Shaw said. “And that’s something I want to do for this community as well.”

But one of the most important lessons Shaw learned in the two and a half years it took her to build her business was to show that same kindness to herself.

“The road hasn’t been easy,” she said, as she juggles three full-time jobs — running Ninny Goat & Co., working for the Vermont Professionals of Color Network and raising her 10-year-old son, Aidan, as a single mother.

Getting a cannabis retail license felt like a fourth full-time job, she said.

“The whole process costs a lot of money and you need a lot of contacts to get it done,” she said. “And there’s a chance you go through the whole process and end up with no deal.”

License applicants must set up their retail space, install security systems, obtain business insurance, write a full business plan, undergo a background check and more before they can move forward with an application, Shaw said. That brings with it myriad costs that often felt like daunting obstacles to opening the business, Shaw said. For example, she said she had to start paying rent for her space as early as February, six months before her store was scheduled to open.

And the costs don’t end there. A cannabis retail license – which must be renewed annually – costs $10,000 for retailers and up to $100,000 for other cultivation and processing operations, according to the Vermont Cannabis Information Portal.

Shaw received financial help through the Cannabis Control Board’s welfare program, which waives a percentage of application and licensing fees. But the program “only takes you so far,” she said, especially given the high upfront costs of opening a brick-and-mortar store.

The program is open to people who come from a community disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition, who have been convicted of cannabis-related crimes, or who are Hispanic or Black, according to the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. According to a report from the board, 14 of Vermont’s 78 licensed cannabis retailers are listed as members of the social equity program.

Shaw said she is proud that her sacrifices at Ninny Goat & Co. are finally paying off.

“You can’t give up on yourself,” she said. “Because it’s really hard and there will be times when you don’t want to do it anymore. So you just have to be patient with yourself and the process.”

That commitment is in line with Fairlee’s broader goal of revitalizing downtown, according to Travis Noyes, who converted the gas station into Shaw’s dream space. Noyes and his family — which has owned Chapman’s General Store in Fairlee for 150 years — have been working since 2019 to save downtown from a “downward spiral” of lost business, Noyes said.

Using a combination of grants, government support, crowdfunding and personal investment, Noyes has transformed local buildings to create housing, a cafe and Shaw’s Pharmacy. He also renovated the town’s general store to make more space for fresh, local food – closing what he calls the rural town’s “food desert.”

“With every project we ask ourselves, ‘How can we have the biggest impact on our small town?'” he said.

For the pharmacy project in particular, he said he wanted to preserve “the character, the basic architectural structures” of the gas station, which had been a fixture in the town center for decades. But he replaced the roof, floors, insulation and other key elements to ensure the building would stand strong for decades to come.

Shaw said she hopes to give back to the community in her own way, too. Her shop already sells the work of local artists and plans to work with local farmers to help fight hunger in the area once she’s more settled.

She moved from her home in Alabama to the Green Mountain State in 2021 to attend Vermont Law School. Although it sounds like a cliche, she said, she “actually fell in love with Vermont” during her time there and decided to move here permanently.

Although she misses her family and friends from her hometown – and the homemade cornbread, grits and roast beef made from Ninny’s recipes – she says the move was worth it for the life she was able to build for herself and her son.

“We enjoy the benefits of living in a bubble that most of the world, and this country, doesn’t even know about,” she said. “There’s better education. There’s cleaner air. And of course, I get to own this business.”