‘That’s a lot of lattes’
By Tom Ayres, Senior Staff Writer
James Williams, the co-proprietor and inventory maven of the new Dreamscape Café in Woodstock Village, was advised by fellow business owners to be prepared for the robust crowds of leaf-peepers and fall travelers who inundate the local area each foliage season.
It turns out the autumn influx of tourists and area residents alike into the village far exceeded the expectations of local business owners this foliage season, which ran from the last weekend in September through this past Sunday, Oct. 19. Williams said he was “astounded” by the foot traffic for lattes, Americanos, espressos and other coffee fare at Dreamscape, the café that he opened last March together with his wife, Rachel, his sister-in-law Brieanna Perez, and her husband Austin.
Williams enthused about the extraordinarily successful first foliage season for Dreamscape in a phone chat on Monday morning, sharing an anecdote about the café’s milk supplies to illustrate just how busy it was for the new shop owners, who extended their business hours to seven days a week from Oct. 1 through last weekend, especially for foliage season.
“There were several days when we were going through so much supply — and I don’t keep a light supply on hand,” Williams said of his stockpile of dairy and alternative non-dairy milks this foliage season. “Every single square inch of my fridge space was stocked full with milk, but there were still several days when we were on our last gallon before we closed the doors for the afternoon at our closing time. It was crazy — people said that summer was pretty busy around here, and I was doing supply runs maybe one or two times a week max. During this foliage season, I was getting supplies every single day from Sept. 27 through yesterday, [Sunday, Oct. 19]. We were going through at least 50 gallons of whole milk, let alone almond and oat milk on top of that, every single day. That’s a lot of lattes,” Williams added.
The experience of the Williamses and Perezes at Dreamscape reflects the tally of visitors maintained by the local Chamber of Commerce at the Woodstock Welcome Center on Mechanic Street. Chamber executive director Beth Finlayson told the Village Trustees at their regular business meeting last week that 14,240 people walked through the doors of the visitors’ center between Oct. 1 and Oct. 14 a year ago. This foliage season, the number of walk-in visitors in that two-week time frame, culminating at the end of Indigenous Peoples’ Day weekend, jumped to 19,237 people — an increase of nearly 5,000, Finlayson reported.
The surge in visitors was evident to town officials, hospitality purveyors, and other business people in the town and in the communities surrounding Woodstock.
“The turnout on the holiday weekend ending on Indigenous Peoples’ Day [on Oct. 13] was the largest I have seen in 47 years,” Jeff Kahn, the proprietor of the Unicorn gift shop and a longtime Village Trustee, told the Standard on Sunday morning. “There were some times in the ‘90s that were awesome on that same weekend, but this year certainly matched or exceeded that. That was my observation both in terms of traffic in the village as well as in the shop,” Kahn added.
David MacKay, the co-owner/proprietor of both The Shire hotel in Woodstock Village and The Jackson inn in West Woodstock, underscored Kahn’s sentiments during a Sunday evening phone conversation. “We shared the same experience [as Jeff Kahn],” MacKay commented. “It was our best [foliage] season thus far.” That was evident by the number of cars that thronged the parking lot at The Shire throughout the foliage time period. “I don’t yet have the final numbers,” MacKay said. “But we had over 85%, maybe even 90%-plus occupancy throughout foliage at both The Shire and The Jackson,” he added.
Over at Billings Farm & Museum, public relations and marketing manager Nori Pepe reported last weekend that the visitor counts for Oct. 1-14 this foliage season and for the previous year essentially flatlined. Pepe said 8,655 people visited Billings last year during the two-week timeframe, versus 8,532 this year. Gift shop revenues at Billings were down by 4%, but interestingly, sales at their Scoop Shop were up nearly 25%, perhaps a reflection on the unseasonably warm weather throughout much of this month.
Indications are that the significant uptick in foliage season visitors is due to thousands more people visiting Vermont by car, rather than relying on the ubiquitous tour buses that ply Vermont roads each fall. Billings Farm & Museum, the Woodstock Chamber, and local businesspeople and officials said they all observed or experienced a downturn in bus traffic in the area this foliage season.
“Believe it or not, our [attendance] numbers were slightly down from last year,” noted Pepe, adding, “I do know that our bus groups were way down this year.” Kahn said he observed fewer buses in the heart of the village than in past years, although he said it was his perception that the overall number of visitors to the community was way up from the past several seasons. Kahn pointed out that a feature article about foliage season in the Woodstock area that ran in a recent issue of Travel & Leisure magazine may have contributed to the upsurge in foliage-related fall sojourns by individual or family travelers.
Virtually all of the business people and local residents who spoke with the Standard indicated that it was a banner year for visitors this season. “I think we exceeded expectations for our first year in Woodstock,” commented Nate Freund, the co-owner of the new Ranch Camp bicycle and taco shop in the East End, which opened in early September. “The volume, the consistency of business, even on days when the weather was inclement, very fully exceeded our expectations,” Freund added.
Over on the other end of Woodstock in neighboring Pomfret, Teago General Store manager Christine Cole also weighed in on the lookback at the 2025 foliage season. “I don’t know that I can say it was massively different this year,” Cole commented during a phone conversation on Monday. “But I will say traffic in Woodstock was a nightmare. I have to go to the bank every day, and the traffic was never pleasant — and this was in the middle of the week.” Cole added that traffic restrictions and detours in effect during foliage season in Pomfret may have had some impact on any added visitors who found their way to the Teago store. “We got a lot of people looking for workarounds because of all the roads that were shut down,” Cole said, referencing traffic restrictions due to repairs under way on Pomfret Road and, for a third consecutive year, travel restrictions along Cloudland and Barber Hill roads to discourage leaf-peeping photo takers and the social media influencers who guide shutterbugs to such iconic foliage stops as Sleepy Hollow Farm.
Pomfret resident Mike Doten lives right at the intersection of Cloudland and Barber Hill roads. He has been one of the most ardent townspeople looking for a solution to the Cloudland Road challenges over the past several years. He is cautiously optimistic for the future, given the success of the Cloudland Road travel restrictions in mitigating the number of photo-snapping visitors who show up to the fabled Sleepy Hollow Road scenic vista over the years.
“I would say it was successful,” Doten offered on Monday morning. “It’s not something we like to do, and our preference would be not to do it,” Doten said of the effort to curb foliage traffic from snarling roadways in a humble little Vermont town. “But everyone was aware of this huge volume of traffic during foliage — this [effort] has been really successful in getting rid of that.”