At the far north end of Pelican’s one-mile boardwalk, Heather Bryant greets customers coming through the big front doors of the Pelican General.
Bryant is like a ray of sunshine, asking customers about their lives while making them a latte or scanning the items in their carts. She and her husband Barry — who happens to be mayor of the small Southeast Alaska fishing village — along with their 14 children, had been visiting Pelican for years from the Lower 48. In 2023, they decided to permanently relocate, launching the store to fill a gap in the remote Chichagof Island community, where residents had gone more than 15 years without a local grocery store.
“It was apocalyptic in this building when my husband and my son came,” Bryant said, gesturing to the shelves around her. “They wore headlamps. It was like whoever was here just took everything off the shelves. It was just an old building that used to be a grocery store, and it was just sitting there for almost 20 years.”
Now, three years in, the 100 or so residents that call Pelican home can walk down the boardwalk and get everything from fresh produce, eggs, and milk, to frozen pizzas, potting soil, and fishing supplies.
“We try to have a spattering of things that you can just grab if you need it in a pinch,” she said. “We’re like, I don’t know, a 7-Eleven or ampm. You know, one of those little quick stops, but not, but are, because the prices are like a quick stop.”
When customers were asked to describe the so-called “quick stop,” a few descriptors come up a lot: convenient, incredible, wonderful, great.
Prior to the store’s grand opening, residents and fishermen alike had to plan weeks ahead, order groceries from Costco and Fred Meyer about 90 miles away in Juneau, and wait for a ferry or float plane to show up with the goods.
“And you had to hope that they put the meats and stuff in the freezer, and they didn’t refrigerate your bananas,” said 31-year-old customer Quintin Hafendorfer. “Stuff like that happened all the time.”
Hafendorfer has spent nearly his whole life in Pelican, and he wears a lot of hats. He works for the city, running the power plant and water treatment center, “and the sewer plant. And then other duties as assigned.”
When the isolated community went more than a month last winter without a ferry or seaplane to bring in supplies or even Christmas presents, he said the store was there, providing customers with food. That’s a good enough reason for him to be a loyal customer.
“Me and my fiance, we come here pretty much every day, even just to wander the aisle and just be like, ‘Yeah, look, I need something and I can go get it.’ It is incredibly convenient to be like, ‘I ran out of mushrooms yesterday.’ I can come down here and get mushrooms and not have to wait for the planes to fly.”
Every summer, Allan Engstrom hand trolls out of Pelican on his 38-foot Bertram, the “Katherine.” The boat is named for what he calls “the Holy Trinity of Katherines in my family:” his grandmother, sister, and daughter.
He said he tries to do all his summer shopping at the general store, perusing the aisles and ordering the “best mocha on the outer coast.”
“It means I don’t have to load up [in Juneau] and manage five months of supplies on my boat at once,” Engstrom said. “So it’s absolutely convenient, and it’s good for the community because it brings fishermen to town. Like the fuel dock and the ice machine, this is a third leg of that trifecta of things Pelican has to offer fishermen, and they’ve done a great job.”
But beyond the convenience, customers say Pelican General is so much more than a store. What began as just a few shelves of basic supplies has grown, aisle by aisle, into a community hub for locals, tourists, and fishermen alike, with movie and craft nights, couches to sit and read on, free Wifi, and a coffee shop.
“There are a couple heartbeats of Pelican. This is certainly a big one,” said Keri Eggleston, who lives in Pelican year-round with her husband and their two kids.
Her husband is a commercial fisherman and she works at the local fish processing plant and does Tlingit language documentation work in the off-season. She said living in an isolated community can be hard at times, and the store helps.
“It’s what makes it possible to be here, really,” Eggleston said. “The cafe, the store, the community center: those things are critical, I’d say, to living here. It really wouldn’t feel like a community without the store.”
While customers are thankful for Pelican General and the Bryant family, Bryant said it wouldn’t be possible without the customers.
“Everyone is a part of the store,” she said. “Even though we are doing it, this is something the town can be proud of, and them being proud of it is part of making it what it is.”
Bryant said she and her husband have always had an open door policy, and she wants everyone who enters the store to feel like they’re just part of her family coming in to grocery shop.
“It’s really turned into an extension of who we are and what we believe in, and I just want it to be a blessing to this community,” she said. “This is going to sound really cheesy, but it’s like a big hug from the Bryants. Really, that’s what this is.”
