Winer Bros Inc

Winer Bros is the Ace Hardware store at 86 Lafayette Street in downtown Salem — a hardware and supplies retailer, not a licensed HVAC or trades contractor. The company's own site credits owner Allan Houle with running it as a family business since 1989; the Better Business Bureau's file instead puts the start in 1982 and counts 44 years in business. Either way, this is a long-running neighborhood fixture, and BBB describes it plainly as a seller of residential and industrial hardware supplies to both consumer and commercial customers. The reputation behind that description runs deep rather than thin: 195 Google ratings average 4.7 stars, the BBB grade is A+, and independent listings on Apple Maps, Nextdoor and local review sites land in the same high-4s range. The thread running through almost every review is the staff — described again and again as the kind who actually know where things are, a detail people say matters most in Salem's older housing stock where the big-box stores come up short. The last six months haven't been entirely smooth. In March, one customer described a testy exchange with a staff member over returning a package of trash bags, calling the interaction condescending — the kind of thing that happens when a small crew handles every interaction personally. A December visit ran into a different snag: the website and the in-store computer both said an item had come in, but nobody could actually locate the part on the shelf. This is a fit for someone who needs an actual hardware item and a person at the counter who'll help track it down — not for a homeowner clicking through expecting installed heating or cooling work, since nothing here describes that kind of trade job. Before making a special trip for something specific, it's worth calling ahead to confirm it's actually on the shelf rather than just showing as available online.