RENSSELAERVILLE — With the closure of a local café, other shops in Rensselaerville — including a new taproom and a relocated farm-to-table restaurant — hope that community support means they are here to stay.

A town staple, the Hilltown Café closed this spring, leaving its spot on Route 353 in Rensselaerville empty. The Kuhar Family Farm and Market stepped in to fill the empty space, after being neighbors for the last few years. The café’s owner, Amanda Wilbur, had run the restaurant for 20 years before she closed her doors permanently in early June, according to Rochelle Kuhar.

The Kuhar Family Farm has been open for around two years, said Kuhar. She also owns the building out of which she and her husband, Micah, operate the restaurant. When her tenant announced she would be closing the Hilltown Café, the Kuhars decided to move their restaurant into the larger space, opening up there two weeks ago.

The building the Kuhars own is made up of three units, one of which is occupied by the Post Office, the next was the site of the Hilltown Café, and the third had formerly housed the Kuhars’ restaurant.

This means that the Kuhar Family Farm is now at the front of the building, where it was previously located at the back before.

“I do have a bunch of people saying, ‘Oh, congratulations on your grand opening!’” she said.

But Kuhar also believes that many loyal customers are coming by to help keep her restaurant alive, after seeing local establishments like the Hilltown Café close.

“They don’t want to lose another place,” she said.

In the meantime, the Helderberg Brewing Company, a New York State farm brewery and taproom, is planning to open a new taproom next door to the Kuhars in their building. The taproom “fits into our ideology” of a local restaurant serving locally made food, said Kuhar.

The pairing of the taproom with her restaurant and the nearby Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve makes her hopeful that the three will symbiotically bring business to one another.

The Helderberg Brewery is currently awaiting a final liquor-license permit from the state before they can begin opening up shop, said Rebecca Platel, a program manager at the Carey Institute. The new taproom will offer more space, but also will allow the on-campus brewery and taproom to be used for events like weddings without there being a concern of closing it to the public, said Platel. Currently, she said, the taproom is closed over the weekend this time of year due to so many weddings using the space.

The new space off of the institute’s campus will also be easier to find and offer more parking, said Platel. The hours of the current operation are Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon. The new taproom will include these hours as well as adding hours on Friday and Saturday. The taproom at the Carey Institute will be closed to the public except on special occasions, said Platel.

The Kuhars are also working to get a liquor license for their restaurant, to either allow customers from the new taproom to bring drinks to the restaurant or to allow the restaurant to carry its own beverages.

Platel hopes to invite other vendors to take advantage of the Kuhars’ location next door to the taproom and near the Huyck Preserve.

“We have a very strong local customer base,” she said.

Platel said that the institute is considering a soft opening on July 27 but, if not then, she believes the taproom will be open by the first week of August.

The Kuhars’ restaurant is currently open on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons, but the hours will change once the taproom opens, said Kuhar, to correspond with its schedule, meaning hours will shift to Wednesday and Saturday nights.

Most of the time, the Kuhars are busy running a nearby farm where they raise pigs, goats, chicken, hops, and vegetables. Beef cattle they raise graze on land throughout Rensselaerville. Products from the Kuhars’ farm are all used as material for their restaurant, or sold from their meat cooler or prepared in pre-made frozen meals for sale.

If they don’t have enough meat from their own stock, they buy locally, said Kuhar. They are also selling local products at the restaurant — right now this includes blueberries and corn — so that it is “more like a farm market with a kitchen.”

The couple had worked at the Palmer House Café for years; Micah was a cook and Rochelle worked as the head waitress and manager. When the closure of the Palmer House was imminent, the Kuhars were faced with the possibility of buying it. Instead, due to their busy schedule running a farm and Rochelle Kuhar working as a teacher at Greenville, they decided instead to open a small restaurant a few nights a week.

“We wanted to do something really small-scale,” explained Kuhar, but later she added, “It’s just as much work as the Palmer House.”

The new location and the prospect of the taproom could bring more than what normally ranges from 20 to 40 people a night.

It was restaurants like the Hilltown Café and the Palmer House that served local people by providing a regular place to go to, said Kuhar.

“The word ‘convivium’ comes to mind,” she said. “A gathering place.”

With that in mind, she wonders if people will now gravitate toward their restaurant, and if they will have to be prepared for that.