What’s red and yellow and filled with coffee, pastries, candy, and ice cream? It’s the newest place in town.
Sprinkles and Scoops opened its doors in the Evergreen shopping center on Aug. 31. This ice cream/candy shop/coffee house is already making a splash.
Jeff and Sonia Howard have been working on Sprinkles and Scoops for seven months. They saw the available spot in the Evergreen center and thought it would be a great
place for an ice cream shop. Rather than waiting and hoping someone else would do it, they decided to take the plunge and do it themselves.
This is a first for Jeff. He has been a truck driver for Coca Cola for 10 years. And he’s now a business owner. He quit his job to focus full time on bringing his endeavor to life. Though his outlook is positive, he’s had to calm the fears of his 9-year-old, who’s wondering what happens if it doesn’t work out.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
His simple statement represents his attitude about not just his family’s future, but the future of everything involving the shop. He wants his employees, mostly Righetti students, to be able to look back on their first job and recall how cool it was, rather than view work as if they were just another rower chained to the oar.
They aren’t worried about the kids knowing about what’s going on. After all, with kids and candy, word travels fast. The concern is letting adults know that there’s something for them at the shop as well. Mixing a sharp business sense with the idea of enjoying a visit to Sprinkles and Scoops, the Howards added into the mix a full coffee bar and pastries. While the kids are bouncing around trying to decide which Jelly Belly mix they want, their parents can enjoy some of Santa Barbara Roasting Company’s finest and tap into the complimentary Wi-Fi service.
The Sprinkles and Scoops inventory is made up of products from several other local businesses. Gina’s Piece of Cake and Donut Time keep them stocked with pastries, and the ice cream comes from a local distributor of Dreyers.
The Howards aren’t just in business to be in business. They want the shop to be part of—and give back to—the community. They’d like to be host to a gingerbread house building contest for Christmas and an egg hunt at Easter to give kids something to do.
“We know it’s not going to be easy,” Sonia said.
But they are on to the part that they love: opening the doors and seeing a horde of happy kids just being kids.
Highlights
• Hardy Diagnostics, a manufacturer of medical devices headquartered in Santa Maria, recently announced the acquisition of the media portion of Gibson Laboratories, a Kentucky-based biomedical firm specializing in microbiology products for office labs.
Gibson’s product line consists of 330 prepared culture media products packaged in Petri dishes and tubes designed to cultivate bacterial and fungal microorganisms capable of causing disease in humans and animals.
Hardy Diagnostics manufactures more than 3,500 different products for the culture and identification of bacteria and fungi at their Santa Maria facility. The Gibson line is currently available through Hardy’s nationwide distribution network, which services 6,000 laboratories throughout the country.
For more information, visit HardyDiagnostics.com.
Biz Spotlight was written by Intern Michael McCone. Highlights were compiled by Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, e-mail, or mail.
This article appears in Sep 15-22, 2011.