About
Marilla Country Store has been open for business since 1851, which means it has outlasted the Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the rise of the shopping mall, and a global pandemic without ever shutting its doors.
Three families have owned it across that span, and the current owner, whose family took over in 1979, can tell you the life story behind nearly everything on the shelves and most of the people who walk in to buy it. Inside, there's a 1917 safe still bearing the dents from a long-ago dynamite job, a collection of guestbooks going back 25 years that doubles as an oral history of the surrounding community, and a shelf of locally made specialty foods that have nothing to do with the hardware sitting next to them.
It is, somehow, still a working general store rather than a museum about one — the kind of place where regulars get asked about their kids by name, and where a woman once drove all the way from New Jersey just to see it for herself, then drove straight home, satisfied.
Know Before You Go
Marilla Country Store sits in the small town of Marilla, about 25 miles southeast of Buffalo, so it's an easy day trip or a worthwhile detour if you're already exploring western New York's Southern Tier. There's no admission or anything formal about visiting — it's a working store, so the best approach is just to walk in and start browsing, the same way generations of locals have.
If you want to talk to Sandy Grunzweig, the current owner, weekday afternoons tend to be quieter than weekends, which gives her more time to chat and pull out stories. The guestbooks are kept near the front and visitors are welcome to flip through them or sign one themselves.
The store hosts a Fall Open House on September 19-20, which coincides with Marilla Ag Day and includes a tractor parade that drew about 150 tractors through town last year — a good weekend to time a visit if you want the place at its liveliest. A Holiday Open House follows in mid-November, right as the Christmas season kicks off.
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Published
July 20, 2026
