Mitchell Granados was still early in his twenties when he opened Now and Then in 2020, moving into the building that had served West Bend for generations as the West Bend General Store. Locals have since taken to describing the young owner as something like a Milwaukee area answer to the pickers and restorers who make American Pickers watchable, someone who treats sourcing old signage, furniture, and decor as much a hunt as a business. That framing fits what is on the shelves at 600 South Main Street: a rotating stock built around quality vintage signs, antiques, and home decor rather than a scattershot mix of whatever came through the door, curated with an eye for pieces that display well in a modern home just as easily as a rustic one.
Housing the shop inside the old general store building matters to how Now and Then feels to walk into. West Bend’s Main Street corridor still carries the bones of a working small city downtown, and putting a vintage and antiques business inside a building that itself has decades of retail history creates a kind of built in authenticity that a strip mall storefront cannot fake. Shoppers browsing the sign and decor selection are doing so inside the same walls where townspeople once bought groceries and dry goods, which gives the space a layered, lived in character on top of whatever inventory happens to be on the floor that week.
Now and Then keeps hours suited to weekend and after work browsing rather than a full retail week: the shop is open Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., with Monday through Wednesday closed. That schedule concentrates staff and inventory turnover into the days when West Bend sees the most foot traffic downtown, including visitors drawn in through the Visit West Bend tourism organization’s promotion of local shops and events. The shop has built a following well beyond a typical small antiques store, with its Facebook page drawing more than 11,000 followers who watch for new sign and decor finds between visits, a following size that points to inventory turning over often enough to keep regulars checking back.
West Bend sits along the Milwaukee River in Washington County, close enough to Milwaukee for a day trip antiquing run but with its own historic downtown worth exploring on foot, and Now and Then’s Main Street location puts it within easy reach of the rest of that district. For collectors specifically hunting vintage advertising and trade signs, the shop’s focus on that category rather than general secondhand goods makes it a more efficient stop than a mixed antique mall where signage might be scattered across dozens of booths. Anyone furnishing a space with a bit of found character, or simply hunting for one great old sign for a garage or bar, will find Now and Then’s curated approach easier to shop than a warehouse style mall.
Now and Then in West Bend, Wisconsin is a curated vintage sign, antiques, and home decor shop inside the historic former West Bend General Store building, open Thursday through Sunday in the heart of downtown.
