Inside a strip mall frozen-yogurt store with orange walls, green plastic tables and a flat screen TV, a mother of three works six days-per-week to make sure that her first business venture is a success. The hot summer weather brings customers inside of the air-conditioned store to get a taste of unsweetened-frozen-yogurt with fresh fruit.
Lori Peljovich, co-owner and mastermind behind the frozen-yogurt store, says that she first tasted the tart frozen treat in New York and she just couldn't get enough. With the help of her brother, local real-estate developer Barry Samuels, she acquired funding, found the location, and set up a test kitchen to try out recipes. Peljovich named her store “boYO,” using trendy yogurt-slang for “Boston Frozen Yogurt.” boYO opened this past May in Charles River Plaza off Cambridge Street next to the affluent neighborhood of Beacon Hill in Boston, Mass.
Peljovich says that the decision to start her business now was personal, “I hadn't worked in over 10 years and I wanted to go back to work and run my own business. I didn't want to go work for somebody else and go sit in an office somewhere.”
Despite the economy, Peljovich says that business is good. During the day, business men and women from Massachusetts General Hospital and Government Center stop by for frozen yogurt, and in the evenings and weekends the store is supported by the student and family populations of Beacon Hill. boYO is not the only business venture to recently open its doors on Cambridge Street. At a time when the pressures of the recession
are crushing small businesses throughout Massachusetts and employment is lower than it has been in 20 years, business on the western side of The Hill is as vibrant as ever. Up and down Cambridge Street, small businesses are opening and expanding, providing jobs to the unemployed and bringing hope to otherwise dismal economic conditions.
Suzanne Besser, Executive Director of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, says that store-front vacancies in Beacon Hill are generally short lived. “It seems that as soon as they go out, it seems like someone’s coming in,” she says during a phone interview earlier this week. “In many of the cases, one has left and another who is currently on the street has moved into larger spaces.”
The Hill Tavern, a restaurant located one block west of boYO on the other side of Cambridge Street, is one of those businesses. They announced last month that they are in negotiations to take over Phoenicia, the Middle Eastern restaurant adjacent to them. The owners of Phoenicia are looking to retire, and The Hill Tavern manager Mico Flynn says that this could provide a great opportunity to accommodate the growing demands of the restaurant. He says that business is good and they would be more than able to support the expansion.
“We’re almost right where we were last year.” Flynn says that the combined population of workers at MGH and residents of Beacon Hill is almost 40,000 people, and that has insulated his business from some of the affects of the recession. “Having Mass General here helps a lot. They haven’t really been affected by the economy at all. Healthcare’s pretty steady.”
Flynn says Phoenicia's asking price for the lease and licenses to their property, is too high “for what they are offering.” He describes the current facilities at Phoenicia as “old and tired,” and says that they will have to put in almost $400,000 to modernize the kitchen, tear down the walls between the two spaces and update the furnishings. Flynn says that if they can settle on a price that satisfies both parties, the expansion would double their property and help them meet more of the neighborhood's needs.
“People don't have a place to entertain because the apartments are so small.” Many of his customers use the bar area of The Hill Tavern as their living rooms, and he would like to be able to support all of their social needs. He
says that they often turn down requests for parties because they are unable to give away the space without turning away their regular customers. “We would combine their back dining room with our dining room and people could use it for birthday parties and meetings.”
The expansion is big news in Beacon Hill. Besser says that the Beacon Hill Civic Association looks at it as an example of the healthiness of the neighborhood. The BHCA is a membership-based organization which provides what Besser calls, “quality of life” resources to the businesses. Many area businesses come to the BHCA for assistance with zoning and licensing laws. Of the 351 businesses in and around Beacon Hill approximately 130 of them are dues-paying members of the organization. Most businesses prefer the BHCA over the City of Boston Chamber of Commerce because of the neighborhood-specific benefits they receive.
“I don't know if they would consider us helping them,” Besser says. Most of the time they work with businesses to keep them up on “maintaining their trash, or the hours they are open, or what we call Good Neighborhood Agreements. We work with them on a lot of those issues.”
The attention to detail in the neighborhood, driven by the BHCA, makes Cambridge Street an attractive destination for new businesses. John True, the assistant manager of The Federal, a pizza and sandwich shop which opened two months ago, says he has been impressed with the cleanliness of their customers and the neighborhood. “It seems that there are a lot of good people that just live around here that really care about this area,” he says. “There is a lot less trash on the streets of Beacon Hill than any other neighborhood in Boston.”
The Federal, which is owned by local entrepreneurial management company Boston Nightlife Ventures, was purchased this past winter from the struggling pizza and sandwich shop, Venice Cafe. The group saw an opportunity to modernize the pizza, sandwich and salad concept by making everything from scratch and using fresh ingredients. They also renovated the building and updated the look and feel of the location with fresh paint, new brickwork and an open kitchen.
True admits that having a business on Cambridge Street has its downsides. Despite the affluent population and consistent sales that The Federal sees between the hours of 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., they also have to contend with the troubles of being downtown. He says, “There are lots and lots of homeless people around here.”
The proximity to M.G.H. keeps The Federal's business thriving during the day but True is concerned about the number of vagrants which the hospital also attracts. On a couple of occasions, the tip jar has disappeared, and
loiters have made themselves too comfortable in the sandwich shop. “We had a guy in here last week who decided he was going to fall asleep on these two chairs.” True says while motioning to his chair. “We had to call the police because he was just laying there, and it was disturbing to the customers. Apparently this is what he does this all the time when he doesn't want to go to the homeless shelter.”
True says that dealing with these issues as well as the post-bar crowd at night, can add to the stress-level of his employees, but financially, it is worth the headache. He says that the only affects of the economy they feel is the cost of food. Rising transportation costs have increased the price of beef and other meats. “We try to have fair prices for what we serve because the [high] quality of the food. I think higher priced items people steer away from, like $20 pizzas.”
True says, “I feel like we are in a good area. I mean a lot of people are going out to lunch. There are a lot of college kids in the area, so I mean, these are people that are going to eat out in the city regardless.”
Peljovich of boYO is also positive that her business will continue to grow. She says, “It's a tough economy and it’s a recession but you know in a recession people want something that will make them happy. They want a treat or something that's gonna help brighten their day. And that's what we're trying to bring... and I think so far we've been successful in doing that.”
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