SALT 2.0 expands from Litchfield County to Brookfield Village

Brook Noel Andy Stowers George Walker

Brookfield Village SALT 2.0

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – She is a non-fiction author with 30 books on her resume and one million copies in print and he was a corporate executive. They were traveling so much that they “never saw each other.”

One of Brook Noel’s books, “I Wasn’t Ready To Say Goodbye” - from 2000, which she co-authored with Pamela Blair - was a best-seller. She has appeared on ABC World News and Fox & Friends.

In an interview with Patch.com, Noel said that about 10 years ago she and her husband, Andy Stowers, formed a plan: “We decided to do something crazy and move cross country where we knew absolutely no one.”

Their daughter, Samantha, was in college and on her way to becoming an attorney in Chicago, so the time was right to travel to Boston and drive east to find a place to start a new life.

“The feel of Connecticut kind of matched to what we had in Wisconsin,” Noel said.

In 2013 they bought the Saltwater Grille in Litchfield – considered one of Northwest Connecticut’s premier prime rib and seafood destinations – and moved to nearby Goshen.

They still have that restaurant, but changes during the 2020 pandemic forced them “to do some pivoting,” said Noel.

“The dining business was basically obsolete,” she remarked.

They established SALT 2.0 in Litchfield in October 2020 and in Torrington in May 2021.

Noel said the formula is quick-serve orders of, “A lot of south of the border, a lot of salads, greens, a lot of healthy options.”

There are bowls, burritos, wraps, quesadillas and a raft of non-alcoholic beverages.

The service is technologically efficient. You can order online and then get a text message when the food is ready. Noel said that about 30 percent of the orders in Torrington and Litchfield are delivered by Grubhub.

Noel said the first two SALT 2.0 operations were “more successful than we had expected,”

Thus, Noel and Stowers wanted “to get a larger customer base.”

On July 6 they opened a SALT 2.0 on a corner facing Federal Road at Brookfield Village. It is open seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. There are 10 employees and deliveries are done via Grubhub and DoorDash.

“We’ve been very busy,” said Noel, who devotes about 80 percent of her time there, while Stowers focuses on the Torrington and Litchfield restaurants.

Advantage Commercial Realty's George Walker, the marketing director for Brookfield Village, predicts success, saying that quick- serve already is popular in town.

“That appears to be a direction a lot of customers are focusing on,” he explained. Conventional restaurants are “doing okay,” but take-out is “very successful.”

Walker noted that there are two lakes -Candlewood and Lillinonah – in Brookfield, and a number of residents near them will pick up meals or have them delivered before they go out on their boats.

Noel said that since the pandemic, outdoor dining also has become more popular and “our footprint lends itself to that” with the patio at Brookfield Village.

Walker told Patch.com in a phone interview that there is a growing base of customers at Brookfield Village, which initially began construction six years ago. He said when phase three of the development is completed in about 18 months there will be a grand total of 125 apartments.

Municipal officials have said for years that the bulk of the customers in the 198-acre Brookfield Town Center central business district near the Four Corners intersection of Federal Road would come from a short radius. However, Noel and Walker said they believe the area also will attract many destination customers from outside the immediate area.

As a transplanted Connecticut resident, Noel said she appreciates the scenic “beautiful ride” along Route 202 from Goshen to Brookfield.

Said Walker, who moved to Connecticut from New York state 50 years ago, “There are probably more crooked roads” in Connecticut than anywhere in the United States.