A tiny town with a huge appetite
Waterbury is a small town with an outsized food reputation. Fewer than 5,000 people live here, spread between a compact village of brick and clapboard on the Winooski River and the strip of Route 100 running north toward Stowe. Yet it draws more food-and-drink pilgrims than anywhere else in Vermont.
The reason is geography plus timing. Waterbury sits at the junction of I-89 and Route 100, which makes it the natural first stop for anyone driving into the mountains, and in the 1980s and 90s a cluster of Vermont’s defining food businesses happened to land here: Ben & Jerry’s built its factory on the hill, Cold Hollow Cider Mill set up its press, Green Mountain Coffee took over the old railway station, and a tiny brewpub on Main Street called The Alchemist began making a double IPA that would change beer worldwide.
What makes it work as a destination rather than a rest stop is that everything is genuinely good and genuinely close. You can eat ice cream at the source, watch cider pressed on 1920s machinery, taste world-champion cheddar, drink some of the rarest beer in America and paddle a mountain reservoir, all within about six miles.
Ben & Jerry’s at the source
The original Ben & Jerry’s factory sits on a hill on Route 100, a mile north of the village. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started in 1978 in a converted Burlington gas station; by 1985 they needed real production capacity, and this is where they built it.
The guided tour runs about thirty minutes: a short film on the company’s history and its social mission, a glass-walled gallery over the production floor and the pint-filling line, and a tasting of whatever flavour is running that day. It is unpretentious and genuinely charming, and the factory is still an operating plant, so what you see depends on the shift.
Downstairs, the scoop shop serves flavours you cannot buy anywhere else, including factory-only experiments and retired classics brought back for a week. Outside on the hillside is the Flavor Graveyard, the single best piece of corporate self-deprecation in America: granite headstones for discontinued flavours, each with a rhyming epitaph mourning its short life. Dastardly Mash, Wavy Gravy, Economic Crunch and dozens more lie there under real turf.
Arrive early or late in the day in summer and during foliage — the parking lot fills, and tour slots sell out. The grounds, the graveyard and the scoop shop are free; only the tour is ticketed, and it is inexpensive.
Cold Hollow Cider Mill and Cabot
Three minutes further north on Route 100, Cold Hollow Cider Mill is the other essential stop, and for many visitors the better one. Its centrepiece is a vintage 1920s hydraulic rack-and-cloth press, still working, still visible through a window in the mill: apples are ground to pomace, layered between cloths on wooden racks, and squeezed under enormous pressure into raw, unpasteurized sweet cider.
You can taste it free from a self-serve tank, which is the best introduction to Vermont apples there is. But the real reason people queue is the cider donuts — dropped into the fryer in view of the counter, rolled in cinnamon sugar and handed over hot. The cider goes into the batter, which caramelizes into a crisp shell around a moist crumb. Get a dozen; you will not save any for later.
The complex also holds a large store of Vermont products — maple, jams, mustards, cheddar — and the Cabot Farmers' Store, where you can taste your way through the cooperative’s range from Seriously Sharp to the three-year Private Reserve and the Clothbound aged in Jasper Hill’s cellars. Between the two shops, this is the most efficient souvenir stop in the state.
A little further along Route 100 you will pass sugarhouses, farm stands and the Waterbury Center green — worth a slow drive rather than a dash.
The beer
Waterbury’s beer reputation rests on a specific piece of history. In 2003, John and Jen Kimmich opened a fifteen-barrel brewpub on Main Street called The Alchemist. In 2011 they began canning a double IPA named Heady Topper, and within two years it was rated the best beer in the world and people were driving from four states away. Tropical Storm Irene flooded the pub out in 2011, and the operation moved to a purpose-built cannery and then to a retail brewery in Stowe, fifteen minutes north — but the pilgrimage still runs through Waterbury.
The original site on Elm Street is now Prohibition Pig, which is both a fine smokehouse and a serious brewery in its own right. Order the smoked pork shoulder or brisket with hushpuppies and a house IPA; the brewery next door pours its own beers in a smaller, quieter room. It takes no reservations and fills on weekends.
Across the block, Blackback Pub is the connoisseur’s stop: a small, dark room with one of the deepest and best-curated tap lists in New England, regularly pouring Hill Farmstead, Lawson’s, Foam and Fiddlehead alongside Belgian and German classics. If you want to taste the breadth of Vermont brewing in one sitting, this is where to do it.
Fifteen minutes north in Stowe, The Alchemist’s retail brewery sells Heady Topper and Focal Banger with a per-person can limit and runs a tasting bar; von Trapp Brewing pours Austrian lagers at the Trapp Family Lodge; and Idletyme sits on the Recreation Path. Twenty-five minutes south, Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield completes the circuit.
The Waterbury Reservoir and Little River
Waterbury is not only about eating. Immediately north-west of the village lies the Waterbury Reservoir, an 850-acre lake created in the 1930s by a Civilian Conservation Corps dam on the Little River, and one of the best flatwater paddling destinations in central Vermont.
Because most of the shoreline is undeveloped state land, the reservoir feels wild. Rent a kayak or canoe locally, launch from the Waterbury Center day-use area or from Little River State Park, and work north into a maze of quiet coves and wooded islands. Remote paddle-in campsites line the upper arms, and swimming is excellent — the water warms well by July.
Little River State Park, on the western shore inside Mount Mansfield State Forest, is the county’s premier campground: tent sites from about 22 dollars and covered lean-tos from about 32, with hot showers, a swimming beach and boat launches. Its trail network is unusual — the Little River History Hike climbs through an abandoned 19th-century hill farming community, past cellar holes, stone walls, an old cemetery and the remains of a schoolhouse, all being slowly reclaimed by forest.
For bigger hills, the Worcester Range rises east of town: Stowe Pinnacle, Hunger Mountain and Mount Hunger all give open ledges within a few miles' walk. Camel’s Hump’s Monroe Trail leaves from Duxbury, ten minutes south-west.
Getting around and day trips
Waterbury’s position is the whole point — almost everything worth seeing in central Vermont is inside half an hour.
Stowe, 15 minutes north — Mount Mansfield, the Recreation Path, The Alchemist, Smugglers' Notch and the Trapp Family Lodge.
Montpelier, 15 minutes east — the gold-domed State House, the Three Penny Taproom and Hubbard Park.
Barre, 20 minutes east — the Rock of Ages quarry and Hope Cemetery’s carved monuments.
The Mad River Valley, 25 minutes south — Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, the Warren Store and Warren Falls.
Camel’s Hump, 15 minutes south-west — the Monroe Trail to Vermont’s wildest 4,000-foot summit.
Burlington, 35 minutes north-west — the lake, Church Street and the Island Line Trail.
Route 100 south — the classic foliage drive through Waitsfield and Warren into Granville Gulf and its roadside Moss Glen Falls.
When to come
Summer and foliage are the busiest. From late June through August the reservoir is warm, the donut line is long and the Route 100 traffic is steady; book lodging ahead. Foliage from late September through mid-October is the peak of the year here — Route 100 north and south of town is one of the most photographed drives in America, and every room within twenty miles sells out.
Winter turns Waterbury into a ski basecamp. Stowe and Bolton Valley are fifteen and twenty-five minutes away, Sugarbush and Mad River Glen twenty-five, and the town’s restaurants and taprooms fill with skiers each evening. The reservoir freezes for ice fishing and skating, and Little River’s trails take snowshoes.
Spring is quiet and cheap: sugarhouses boil through March and April, mud season closes the high trails above 2,500 feet until Memorial Day, and the donuts and beer are just as good with nobody in line. Stick season, from late October to mid-December, brings the lowest rates of the year.
Where to stay
Waterbury and Waterbury Center hold a good spread — a handful of village inns and bed-and-breakfasts in walking distance of Elm Street’s restaurants, motels and mid-range hotels along Route 100, and dependable chains at the I-89 interchange for anyone driving through. It is consistently better value than Stowe for the same access to the mountain.
Little River State Park is the camping choice, with tent sites and lean-tos from 22 to 38 dollars a night and a swimming beach, plus remote paddle-in sites on the reservoir. Waterbury Center’s day-use area adds a second lake access.
If your trip is mountain-first, Stowe fifteen minutes north puts you slopeside; if it is capital-first, Montpelier and Berlin are fifteen minutes east and cheaper still. Compare live prices for all of them in the search below, with free cancellation on most rooms.
Good to know
Why is Waterbury famous for food?+
Because a cluster of Vermont’s defining food businesses landed here: the original Ben & Jerry’s factory, Cold Hollow Cider Mill’s 1920s press and donuts, the Cabot Farmers' Store, and the Main Street brewpub where The Alchemist first brewed Heady Topper.
Is the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour worth it?+
Yes — about thirty minutes, inexpensive, with a glass gallery over the working production floor and a tasting. The scoop shop sells factory-only flavours, and the hillside Flavor Graveyard, with granite headstones and rhyming epitaphs for retired flavours, is free.
What is Cold Hollow Cider Mill?+
A working cider mill on Route 100 that still presses on a vintage 1920s hydraulic rack-and-cloth press, visible through a window. Free samples of raw sweet cider from a self-serve tank, hot cider donuts fried in view of the counter, and the Cabot Farmers' Store in the same complex.
Where do you drink beer in Waterbury?+
Prohibition Pig on Elm Street, a smokehouse and brewery on The Alchemist’s original site, and Blackback Pub across the block, which keeps one of the deepest tap lists in New England. The Alchemist’s own retail brewery is fifteen minutes north in Stowe.
What is there to do outdoors in Waterbury?+
Paddle or swim the 850-acre Waterbury Reservoir, camp at Little River State Park, walk the Little River History Hike past cellar holes of an abandoned hill farming community, and climb Stowe Pinnacle, Hunger Mountain or Camel’s Hump nearby.