Our where-to-eat guide covers Lincoln's restaurants and cafés as places to sit. This is the other question guests ask us before they arrive: how do I get out the door at six-thirty with coffee and lunch, and what do I need to have bought last night? The valley is small and early hours are thin, so a little planning turns a scramble into a routine.
The short version: your suite has a mini fridge and the coffee lounge downstairs has coffee and tea, which solves the first coffee and the overnight cold storage; Main Street's early spots handle the second coffee and the trail sandwich; Price Chopper the evening before handles everything else. And whatever you are driving into — the Kancamagus, the notch, the trailheads — assume it has nothing, because it doesn't.
The head start in your suite
Every suite has a mini fridge, and the coffee lounge downstairs has coffee, tea and a microwave. That means the first coffee is in your robe at whatever hour the alarm says, and last night's grocery run — yogurt, fruit, the sandwich fixings, the wine — is cold and waiting. Guests who plan a dawn start make the sandwiches the night before and are on the road before anything in town opens.
Breakfast here is on your own terms — coffee and oatmeal in the coffee lounge, or a short walk to Main Street — which suits a self-guided, adults-only stay.
Early coffee and trail food in town
Main Street in Lincoln has a bagel-and-breakfast-sandwich spot that opens early enough to matter and does coffee you can drink in the car on the way to the trailhead — it is the local hikers' pre-dawn stop and it gets slammed on weekend mornings, so go before seven or expect a line. North Woodstock has its own morning café and a bakery. Our where-to-eat guide names names and current hours change seasonally, so we point you there rather than print a schedule that ages.
Sit-down breakfast — the classic diner-style places — opens later and fills fast on weekends; it is the after-the-early-hike breakfast, not the before.
The grocery run
Price Chopper (branded Market 32) at 10 Paper Mill Drive, just off Main Street, is a full supermarket with a deli, bakery, pharmacy and a solid range of plant-based, gluten-free and allergen-friendly options — the reliable answer to every dietary question in a town this size. Do the run the evening you arrive: sandwich fixings, fruit, snacks, electrolytes, the beer or wine, and a bag of ice if you have a cooler.
For a Kancamagus day, build the cooler here — there is no store, gas station or restaurant for the highway's entire 34 miles, and the picnic at a river overlook beats any lunch you'd find at either end.
What a trail day needs
Water: two to three liters per person for a real hike, more in July; the summits have none. Real food, not just bars — a sandwich, fruit, salty things. A thermos of coffee for the summit. And for the drive: gas. Fill up at Exit 32 before the Kancamagus, before the notch parkway (which has none), and before any road that ends at a trailhead.
Cell service is absent on the Kanc and thin in the notch, so the provisioning list includes offline maps — our cell-service guide covers what to cache.
The evening version
Coming back tired: town is a 5 min walk from the lodge and the restaurant strip handles dinner without a car. Coming back late: the mini fridge and the microwave in the coffee lounge turn the grocery run into a quiet supper on the back deck. Both are the plan, depending on the legs.
Where to stay
The grocery store is a few minutes from the door and Main Street a 5 min walk. Our guests' standard pattern: shop the evening they arrive, coffee from the lounge at dawn, sandwiches from the fridge, on the trail while the lots are still empty.
Sources & official info: fs.usda.gov
— Launchpoint Lodge, From the lodge
