In a town of roughly 2,000 people, there are not many things that qualify as a geopolitical event. The addition of a stop sign on South Main once generated three selectboard agenda items. The question of whether the new bench outside the post office was correctly positioned remains technically unresolved. And yet none of that — none of it — has the voltage of what is currently unfolding on a half-mile stretch of Route 100 just north of the village center.

There are now two establishments selling creemee in Wilmington. They are 0.25 miles apart. One has been here for decades. The other smokes brisket for a living and has apparently decided that was not enough.

A Brief History of the Incumbent

The Creemee Stand at 716 Route 100 requires no introduction in this valley, but we will provide one anyway for the record. It is a seasonal roadside stand. It opens at 3 p.m. It closes at 9 p.m. It does not take your nonsense and it does not stay open past 9 p.m. Its Vermont Maple Soft Serve — made with pure maple syrup from trees you can see from the serving window — was named by Edible Green Mountains magazine as one of the four best maple creemees in the entire state of Vermont. Not the region. The state. The entire state.

For those keeping score: Vermont has approximately 251 towns. The Creemee Stand is in the top four. It has held this position with the quiet confidence of an institution that has never once needed a press release.

Enter the Challenger

RVQ Smokehouse sits at 661 Route 100, in the River Valley Market lot, 0.25 miles to the south. It is a food trailer. Its stated mission — etched into the DNA of its brand with the conviction of people who mean it — is "low, slow, and ready to go." It smokes Texas brisket. It pulls pork. It produces baby back ribs that customers have described, publicly, as generating BBQ dreams. It makes cornbread. It is, by all available accounts, exceptional at every single thing it does.

RVQ is now doing creemee.

We want to be clear that we are not here to editorialize. brbVT is a community media organization committed to fair, balanced coverage of all local developments, including soft-serve escalations. We simply think the community deserves to know that a BBQ food trailer has, unprompted, decided to enter the frozen dessert vertical within a quarter mile of a two-decade incumbent that once made Edible Green Mountains.

A Purely Journalistic Comparison

What This Means for the Valley

Historians — or at least people who have lived here long enough to have opinions about bench placement — will note that Wilmington has never had a creemee conflict. There has always been one place to get a creemee on this stretch of Route 100, and that place has been very good at it, and everyone has gone home happy. This is no longer the situation.

What RVQ brings to the table, literally, is an interesting proposition: the possibility of a pulled pork sandwich followed immediately by a soft serve, without moving your car. The strategic wisdom of this is difficult to overstate. The human instinct after smoked brisket is not, typically, to get back in the vehicle and drive somewhere else. RVQ has identified this gap and moved into it with the confidence of a pitmaster who has never lost a smoke-off.

The Creemee Stand, for its part, does not appear to have issued a statement. It opens at 3 p.m. It will continue to open at 3 p.m. The maple syrup comes from trees you can see from the window. Some institutions do not respond to competition. They simply continue being excellent.

brbVT will monitor this situation as it develops. We have no dog in this fight. We do, however, have strong feelings about the democratic process of you forming your own opinion on Route 100 — and we suggest you get to work.