This is a Champlain Farms convenience store and Gulf gas station, and it is incredibly sketchy. The selection of items is small and way overpriced. Mostly they seem to deal in the low-end beer, lottery tickets, soda, and cigarettes required by Winooski's lower-class and welfare populations. The people behind the counter are often rude and unresponsive and seem to be too busy bickering with each other to actually attend to customers. They run the deli part of the store, where they prepare food, and deal with money and customers at the same time, without washing their hands. It's hard to tell if the manager is stoned or developmentally disabled. The store is absolutely filthy. The floor looks like it hasn't been cleaned in years and chunks of it literally come off underfoot. Counters are sticky and covered with sugar and spilled coffee that seems only rarely to be wiped up. There is sometimes no coffee available because the employees have forgotten to make it. The store is sometimes closed during business hours with a sign on the door saying the employee will be back soon. You often have to run a gauntlet of sketchy-looking people and assorted smokers to get into the door. There are often sketchy people loitering around inside the store, as well, talking to the employees (probably their friends). There is frequently garbage and trash in the parking lot. There is a sketchy apartment upstairs, also owned by Champlain Farms. I was walking past one evening, and a chair came through a second floor window, showering the parking lot with glass, after one of the tenants got angry. The parking lot is frequently the place of business for local drug dealers, including some of the employees of the store. The manager of the store is unresponsive to complaints. All this is basically in the middle of a residential neighborhood. You couldn't ask for anything worse. read more
