A Growing Appetite for Specialty Foods

Tired of the chains' assembly-line offerings, consumers are increasingly turning to tiny purveyors for quality products and a personal touch

by Stacy Perman

Nestled on a hip stretch of Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles is a gleaming, stainless steel ice cream parlor named Milk. It's just one example of an independent business that is benefiting from a countrywide shift in consumer taste from the mass market to the artisanal. The three-month-old shop is quickly catching on with customers, who are attracted to its nostalgic feel and emphasis on fresh ingredients and handmade deserts. Vanilla-bean milkshakes topped with malted-milk balls, custom-built ice cream sandwiches, bonbons, and made-from-scratch brownies and cookies number among Milk's expansive offerings.

The brainchild of the former corporate executive chef for the Patina Restaurant Group (it operates New York's Sea Grill and Café Pinot in Los Angeles, among others), Bret Thompson, and his partner, former Patina pastry chef Richard Yoshimura, sank $750,000 into developing the small, premium ice cream shop that pays homage to the frozen treat's roots but with a decidedly contemporary twist. "This stems from our passion for pastries, ice cream, and nostalgia," says Thompson. "We were only going to do this if we did it by scratch."

Indeed, the shop harkens back to a time before the advent of giant retail chains that dish up mass-produced ice cream trucked in from miles away. At Milk, everything is not only made by hand, it's made on site. Inside a special room chilled to 35F, staffers create premium, stabilizer-free blends using choice ingredients. Even the milk comes from an old-fashioned dairy in Montebello, Calif., that still uses glass bottles, as it has done since 1920.

"The Wal-Mart Effect"

The strategy is paying off. Thompson says Milk has already exceeded initial sales goals and is profitable, earning an average of $65,000 a month. By July, he expects to be taking in about $100,000 a month in revenue. "Customers are happy to have a real ice cream parlor," says Thompson. "They haven't seen something like this in a long time."

Milk is part of a small and steady renaissance of tiny niche outfits that are making a comeback in areas that had been morphed into an archipelago of chain stores. Consumers tired of the chains' clinical atmospheres, indifferent service, and mass-produced products are returning to small specialty stores where they can find unique products and know the face behind the counter.

In a sense, it's something of a return to the time when mom-and-pop shops dominated the retail business landscape. "People are tired of the Wal-Mart (WMT) effect and department stores, [where] they see exactly the same thing," says Michael Levy, professor of marketing at Babson College in Babson Park, Mass. Levy adds that higher income and widespread travel abroad also have driven Americans' interest in shopping small.

L.A. Landmark

In 2004, Irv's Burgers, a West Hollywood (Calif.) institution, faced extinction when developers planned to raze the 57-year-old burger joint and put up a Peet's Coffee in its place. But Irv's, an enduring example of post-WWII roadside architecture (not more than a tiny shed, with a patio and a few stools and counters) located at the end of the old Route 66 on Santa Monica Boulevard, had a fierce customer base that refused to see the spot turn into another chain store. "The idea that a corporation was going to muscle in and use this place disturbed me and a lot of people," says Don James, a semiretired movie composer and an Irv's regular.

James and fellow regulars banded together and fought to preserve the place rockers Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison used to frequent, and which singer Linda Ronstadt once used as the backdrop for one of her album covers. It's also a place where the current owners, the Hong family, work the tiny grill and know the regulars by name. In fact, they can usually anticipate orders before the regulars can open their mouths. In 2005, Irv's loyalists succeeded in getting the city to give the burger spot historic-landmark status—ensuring the institution's future.