Young's Candy Shop (Working with independent merchants is difficult)

Young's Candy Shop
Originally uploaded by MikeWebkist.

This is a photo by MikeWebKist of Young's Candies, a shop on Girard Avenue.

This shop was our second stop on a tour of Girard Avenue held during the Urban Forum in Philadelphia in 2003; the first stop was the Philadelphia Zoo.

The tour guide prepped us, saying that this merchant could be difficult.

Girard Avenue is a great old street near the Philadelphia Zoo, not too far from downtown. It's a pretty typical lower income area in a center city.

There's not a lot of retail although the buildings are still there (places like H Street NE in DC, Monument Avenue in Baltimore, Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, etc. are much different -- although H Street DC pales compared to the other two). Lots of great historic residential and commercial rowhouse buildings, and here and there some infill crap.

Young's is beautiful. Maybe 15-18 foot high ceilings, great facade, original tin ceilings and wooden shelves. An incredible resource. (Even if I am still appalled that the counter help didn't use plastic gloves to pick up the candy in fulfilling your order.)

SO the owner, Mr. Young starts speaking to us and describes how the dairy and supermarket industries ruined his business by getting the regulations changed to allow more air into the production of ice cream.

His handpacked ice cream products couldn't compete with air, so he stopped making ice cream.

I couldn't hold it in... and I exclaimed "But you're not competing with supermarkets, you're selling experiences. You're less than one mile from the Philadelphia Zoo, and you could have a kiosk-cart there, selling your candy to hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Plus, if you put in a coffee bar here, you'd make a fortune."

One of the African-American women on the tour with me then exclaimed, "People here can't afford products like that."

Say what? (Note that this is a phrase I never say.) Are you telling me that lower-income people don't buy ice cream, coffee, and candy? An ice cream cone costs $1.50 (or a little more). Most everybody can afford such once in awhile.

Well, he wasn't used to hearing "the word," and that's one person I'm not likely to do consulting for. But if I had the money, I'd buy that store in a minute. It has tremendous potential, and you could expand the offerings in many ways.

Index Keywords: retail; urban-revitalization