above: Gianna is wearing a top, pants and jacket from Vince in Westport. Lloyd is wearing a linen shirt from Bloomingdale’s Men’s Store and pants from Theory.
Photographs by Katharine Calderwood // Vintage Photography: Contributed
THE FOUNDERS OF DOUBLE L SHARE HOW A ROADSIDE STAND GREW INTO A GOURMET DESTINATION, AND HOW HIS LATEST CREATION, “SCREENTIME,” IS BLENDING TECH AND THEATER.
Samantha Yanks: 40 years in business, and Double L is where most people around this town call their “happy place.” The town loves you. Sounds like congrats are in order.
Lloyd: 40 years, that’s a good long while. Of course, all of this brings us joyous feelings of fulfillment and accomplishment, especially the reference “happy place,” people tell us that a lot. Since the day I put up four posts and an awning on Kings Highway North along the Sasco Creek with that beautiful waterfall cascading behind the farmstand, this town and surrounding community has supported me. It just came to me one day. Rippe’s Farm was gone and the town was without a farmstand. I want to mention important things. Westport is special in so many ways. It’s a fun town. Playful. Culturally diverse, well educated, gracious, polite, has an outstanding school system, and on and on. What I, what we, are able to offer, what we can present here, has a lot to do with the very makeup of this town.
SY: What made you think you could do this: start a farm stand from scratch. I know your background was in fashion design and music.
Lloyd: I had walked away from eight years in the fashion business to try my hand in music, Epic gave me a singles deal and I did MTV’s first fashion music video. I was 32 years old. It was my 15 minutes of fame. Fast forward to the farmstand. My brother was with Chiquita Corp. and introduced me to Fred Jarjura, the original produce buyer for Stew Leonard’s. He took me under his wing, I walked the Hunts Point Terminal Market in the Bronx six nights a week for six years, 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. in the morning and all he kept saying to me: “You will never win the price game, you are only going to buy the best.” From that point forward that is all I’ve done. I’m still here forty years later. And while I’m mentioning mentors, there’s one other, Ralph Bono, an Italian immigrant. He and his brother had an open-air-farm stand down on Arthur Avenue. Ralph went on to be the display man for Balducci’s on Tenth Avenue. One of my first nights in the market I’m standing in front of this grape display, a wall of green grapes, and I reach out to taste one. A voice from behind me yells “Don’t ruin my display, take the whole stem!” When Ralph retired he came and worked for me for two summers and when Ralph did a display, it was like Picasso had just painted a still life. He also said, “You carry every package to the car.” We’ve done it ever since. It’s not a chore, it’s a chance to get fresh air, visit with another, a pause in routine.
left and right: Double L Market’s inviting storefront reflects its commitment to fresh, local, and sustainable goods. middle: “Where is Lloyd” leaflet appears at the Double L as many ask this question. The answer is he is working on ScreenTime the musical while coming in early mornings to taste and approve products.
SY: Boy you had some really great mentors. The world needs more of them.
Lloyd: Since ’85 I’ve been mentoring kids. It’s so important to inspire young people, pass on what you know. And mentoring is a two-way street, we both learn, teach each other. Parents come to me, and all I can promise them is that I will give them love and discipline. A mother said to me, “My daughter was a wallflower when she came to you. Now she’s on Wall Street.” Just last month I had breakfast with a young man who worked for me that I had not seen in 38 years. He has his own sports affiliation advertising company with four offices nationwide, and he said he owed it all to me. That I pushed him hard, made him do things he didn’t think he was capable of doing. And here’s a good one, him teaching me. One day he said to me, “You know, we sell that one restaurant, why don’t we try to sell some more”. At 18 years old this kid set up our wholesale company. Before we knew it, we controlled the restaurant market in Fairfield County. Stuff like this is what makes it all worth it. Kids, well they are grownups now, all pop in to say hi. Double L alumni. How’s this for a story? I saw West Side Story performed at Staples. You could have moved the show to Broadway. My season started and I told Justin, a Staples student, to go get Maria and the Jets, anybody from the cast that needed a summer job to come apply. I got Maria and a few of the Sharks and Jets and while they worked they sang along to musicals every day, all day. The customers loved it. They inspired me to write two musicals. We were recording inside barns and big refrigeration units. It was a blast. We performed one at the City Hall theater. The other show, more about that later; it’s in early production now.
SY: So back then, you had a Ruff and Tumble Farm Stand, you’ve been indoors for 15 years and it’s become this beautiful creative collaboration between you and Gianna.
Lloyd: It’s a partnership of inspiration and shared ideas. Gianna’s resolute vision of staying true to clean foods and her eye for beauty has brought this baby to where it is now.
SY: So what’s your story, Gianna? You grew up in Spain?
Gianna: I was born here in the States. My parents, both artists, decided on a whim to move from New York City to Italy, where they had lived a short while before my sister and I were born. I was three and my sister was six months old. The ship we were on stopped in the port of Malaga, Spain. They fell in love with the place and we stayed for 15 years. I grew up in a small mountain village called Mijas. I just took Lloyd there last year. It’s still pretty idyllic. The same butcher, bread store, outdoor market, is still there today. I grew up farm to table not even realizing how lucky I was. The egg lady would walk through town every day, in the summer she had strawberries too. Mom cooked everything fresh and I did not come across packaged food until I returned to the States. I graduated from NYU while working as a copy girl at the New York Post. I had begun in journalism and ended up with a French Literature major, don’t ask. I got a great position at a top talent agency representing fashion photographers and hair and makeup artists, repping the likes of Bert Stern and Laura Mercier. I learnt a lot about styling and composition.
Lloyd: I’d been in New York for five years by that time. I’d driven up from Texas.
Gianna: Lloyd gets a kick speculating that we actually crossed paths at the 1964 World’s Fair, he was on a Boy Scout troop trip. I was in a stroller.
Lloyd: Or it could have been Studio 54.
Gianna: Right, I would have been dancing; meanwhile, you were inside working on celebrity parties for the likes of Bianca Jagger and Liza Minelli, or Dolly Parton with all the hay and horses. He’s got lots of stories to tell! Our paths finally crossed in the late ’90s at Weston Middle School. We had both settled in Weston with our families. We each have two children. Lloyd had formed a theatrical troop and was working with kids, his son and other students. It was called “The Peanut Gang Players.” They did shows based on The Peanut book series. Well, this led to Cable Kids News. That’s where we officially met. Students would cover school news stories and we would help edit and flesh out the stories with them. That’s the first time we worked together. He taught me “shoot to edit.” He has an incredible eye!
Lloyd: We would get coffee together. Work at each other’s homes.
Gianna: I have fond memories of those times. We were friends. I enjoyed our intellectual repartee.
SY: And now, here you are married?
Gianna: Yes, but that did not happen for a long while. We kept in touch over the years. He’d invite me to events like his Being Martha book signing and I’d invite him to my art shows, I sculpted for years. I hadn’t heard from him in a while when I received an email that he was re-opening the Double L on the side of the road in Southport. And I went of course!
SY: Lloyd?
I had just finished my book on Martha Stewart; my back was killing me from sitting in a chair for a year and I had called Sal Gilbertie and told him I needed some physical exercise, did he have anything? He thought I was joking but the next thing you know I’m watering 28 greenhouses a day, herb pot by herb pot. I loved it. The season winds down, and I get a call from Justin, who worked for me when he was 15 years old at the King’s Highway farmstand. He’s buying organic food for Fresh Direct in New York City, wants something new, and asks if I’d like to go back on the side of the road. I say “let’s do it” and we go looking and find a broken down nursery in Southport on the Post Road. Here’s the twist. I had my old email list from earlier years, and I sent out an announcement to everyone that I’m back on the side of the road with a new address. So there I was and sure enough, Gianna pulls in for a visit. I take her on a tour. I think I might have given her a taste of fruit. I show her the beautiful weeds out back blowing in the wind. It was the right place at the right time.
From juicy peaches to vibrant greens, Double L’s produce is hand-selected for flavor, beauty, and the joy it brings to the table.
SY: Is this how you remember Gianna?
Gianna: Clear as day. I drove up to this crazy, broken-down old nursery building. There he was, sitting with Justin. I saw him before he saw me. Something was different. He looked so relaxed. I remember he looked so happy. We hugged, and he took me by the arm as I’ve seen him do with so many others, to show me around. Yes, he fed me something. He took me out back to show me the weeds, of course. Something felt different. He walked me to my car and signals me to lower the window and says to me “You look xxxx-ing amazing.” I drove away, I don’t know how far I got, all I remember is my heart was beating a mile a minute and I had to pull over. I called my best friend and told her what had just happened. Get this. She asks, “Was it Lloyd?”
Lloyd: It was a magical summer. Something about being on the side of the road, open-air, wild and free. I had a pickup truck parked out back, we’d sit on the tailgate, eating tomato and mozzarella and lots of peaches. We were both in transition from our previous relationship.
Gianna: Within two years we were living together. I was working with Lloyd on the back end, keeping the books for the market while teaching Spanish in New Canaan and finishing off a masters in social work at Fordham. Lloyd took good care of me, made me lunch every day and had dinner ready for me when I got back from night classes. It’s always been teamwork with us. Then, Covid! I’m working remotely. My dad is sick and moves in with us with my mother and daughter. Lloyd’s locked inside a building with Phil and six girls packing out 50 boxes a day for curbside pickup. We all have similar stories.
Lloyd: And then the real reckoning. The pandemic is winding down, and customers want in. It was daunting just to think of reopening the store again after being a warehouse for over a year. So much had changed and we were no longer just a fruit and vegetable market. Customer requests made us evolve into a specialty grocery store as we had strived to procure everyone’s needs and wants.
Gianna: So much changed during this time personally for us. My dad passed away at home in my arms. Priorities drastically shifted. I remember talking with my supervisor about the pulls I was experiencing and he simply said. “Lloyd’s been there for you, it sounds like it’s time for you to be there for him”. There was no hesitation on my part.
Lloyd: Gianna and I are suddenly working side by side and guess what? We find out we love working together! I’m broad brushstrokes; Gianna has this wonderful penchant for detail and elegance; it was like magic, and we were surrounded by a like minded, food-loving crew, one formidable team. Gianna’s obsession for researching and procuring clean specialty products that meet our customers’ quest for healthy food with my knowledge of buying fresh produce has transformed this market into a gourmet destination.
Gianna: Then we really sealed the deal when we eloped that next year to Anguilla after living together 14 years. It’s funny: people ask us if we tire of working together every day. We really don’t. We truly enjoy each other’s company, driving in to work, hashing out ideas, laughing. The creative process never ends. Don’t get me wrong, we are both the eldest sibling and extremely opinionated, but here’s something I think is important, something my mother noted early on: “You have a deep respect for one another,” and that continues to this day, and he really is my best friend.
SY: It is pretty unique. I can see how your talents meet. “Gianna, you bring a sense of style, add an elegance to Lloyd’s rough ‘n’ ready roadside attitude. But there’s more than just Double L. Tell me about this latest adventure, this cybermusical? ScreenTime. You’ve played me some of the music; the topic is right on target.
Lloyd: The crazy thing is I wrote it 20 years ago. Remember when I told you I had the West Side Story actors working for me one summer? They inspired me. At the time AOL and their chat rooms had just changed everything. And I had an idea for a cybermusical called DeSkToPsToRy. I was lucky to have an incredible mentor Gene Feiss who founded the Roundabout Theatre, which is now the American Airlines Theatre. He threw my first script into the trash can. He was on the Tony committee and took me to Broadway shows for two years meanwhile teaching me the art of writing a musical. AOL actually considered it but the timing wasn’t right for them. So I put it aside. A year ago I wanted to start writing my blog again so I called Steph over at CTbites and told her I needed a deadline to break the writing block. The piece just so happened to be about Joshua Meznik, the man behind the new restaurant Josie and Tony’s. I wove his background in musical theatre into the article and in the process revisited DeSkToPsToRy. It struck me that I had written this 20 years too early and that technology had finally caught up to my original vision.
Gianna: He had played the music to me years earlier, but it was like the tear sheets he’d shown me in Vogue magazine of his clothing designs, it was all in passing.
Lloyd: It began to percolate and the realization seized me that it was all there. So I told Gianna the time for this show was now and it’s called ScreenTime and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
Gianna: The store is exploding, and this man wants me to work with him on a musical. I called a friend and broke down, and I remember telling them “I don’t even like musicals,” how do I go on this trip?
SY: How did you get through this?
Gianna: OMG, we literally went back into therapy for this one. By the way we are firm believers in tune-ups. We are sitting there and our therapist says to me, “You know it’s not going to go away.” Fast forward and here I am loving every minute of it. Truth be told, it’s a beautiful love story and it’s all in the music.
Lloyd: It’s a romantic comedy. The workings and challenges of a relationship in this technological world we live in. The personal pull of it. How does one find balance in this brave new world? We love our phones and hate them at the same time. Throw in a dash of an AI character and you’ve got a love triangle and all the complications that make up a story everyone will see themselves in. We are getting ready to preview, four to five scenes, at the Westport Library on Sunday July 20 at 2 p.m. I’m so excited, it was clear to me from the beginning that the library was the perfect place for a showcase. One of the songs, “I Love Reading Books,” made me realize this.
SY: Didn’t you tell me something about ScreenTime literally streaming on social Media?
Lloyd: Yes I did. Go to @screentimethemusical on Instagram. A lot of friends and social media influencers are getting involved in the process. No matter what media platform you use: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, you can follow along as the show is building out. Rehearsals, choreography, scene development, even live moments, and you can interact with all of it; comment, audition, duet a song, dance to a number you like. On top of it all, the amazing team and technological possibilities the library has to offer is going to make this an interactive experience like no other both at the show and online.
signs of the times
From farm(stand) to table
fresh paint
Double L’s iconic hand-painted signs have humble origins. What started as an inexpensive way to identify fresh produce, delivered daily, has become an identifier of the market. What’s in season lures you in, from cider to corn, fresh fish to free range chicken.
penmanship matters
The cardboard signs with handwritten product descriptors sit perfectly atop everything from potatoes to pears and each varietal has a call out. In the potato area, fingerlings, pee wees and purple sweet potatoes each have their own sign.
delivery notes
With new expanded deliveries in Fairfield County, each box comes with a watercolor note. In addition to Greenwich and New York, Double L now delivers to more towns in Fairfield County including New Canaan, Darien, Fairfield and Westport!