Personal Service Content Block 3

Kieslich’s Market offered a free, daily delivery service for customers. Prior to telephones, the delivery person—usually a Kieslich family member—would stop at a customer’s home to pick up a list, returning that evening or the next day with the goods. No one was exempt from doing deliveries. Owner John V. “JV” Kieslich’s three sons, Albert, Arthur, and John F. made local deliveries on foot in the neighborhood, often anticipating what regular customers needed. 

For deliveries farther afield, JV hired drivers to deliver by horse-drawn wagon.  Customers expected the deliveryman to put the groceries in their iceboxes and on their pantry shelves. Phone orders and a truck streamlined service in the 1920s.  In the early years, clerks packed the groceries in collapsible wood boxes with the Kieslich Market name stamped on the side.

When Vermont’s Tenth Cavalry returned from pursuing revolutionary general Pancho Villa in Mexico, they brought with them a burro as mascot. John Kieslich won the burro in a raffle at the German Club. “Burro” sometimes made deliveries—when he felt like it.

Burlington Daily News, May 11, 1917