Maria Lewis at Nothing Bundt Cake. Below, red velvet cake samples. (Photos by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
Filling a hole that Shrewsbury didn’t know it had, Nothing Bundt Cakes opened last month in the Staples/Trader Joe’s shopping center on Route 35.
Owners Maria, Carly, and Bill Lewis are betting their franchise, the first to open in New Jersey, can succeed on a concept centered— sorry — on a single style of cake. Read More
Paul Finkler is severing his ties with Pizza Fusion and rebranding his Broad Street restaurant Earth Pizza. (Click to enlarge)
By ROBERT KERN
You might call it a pizza “de-fusing.”
Just three years after opening a Pizza Fusion franchise in Red Bank, owner Paul Finkler is cutting the chains and rebranding his newly independent Broad Street restaurant as Earth Pizza.
Dissolving ties to a franchisor may seem daring, but Finkler looked at the restrictions imposed by the chain versus his desire to meet the needs of his customers, and said he knew what he had to do.
Pizza Fusion is a franchise like McDonald’s is a franchise, and they don’t like people tinkering with the menu,” Finkler tells redbankgreen. I wanted to give my customers what they were asking for, like more gluten-free and more vegan options. Being in a franchise, my hands were tied.
Produce from the vegetable garden outside Pop’s Garage in the Grove West will be used in dishes. (Click to enlarge)
Pop’s Garage, a popular Mexican restaurant on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, opens its third outlet today in the Grove West shopping center in Shrewsbury.
The taqueria is the seventh in a cluster of varied restaurants owned and run by Marilyn Schlossbach, the brains behind Langosta Lounge, another Mexican place on the boardwalk; Trinity and the Pope, offering Cajun dishes in downtown Asbury; the Dauphin Grille, a seafood spot in that city’s Berkeley hotel, and the casual-themer Labrador Lounge, in Normandy Beach, where the third Pop’s Garage is also located.
But this one represents a breakout for Schlossbach, and not solely because it’s located in a highway shopping center. Along with her partner-brother Rich and husband Scott, Schlossbach created the Shrewsbury Pop’s as a prototype for what they hope will grow to into a national franchise.
redbankgreen caught up with 46-year-old Schlossbach who is also running for state Assembly as a Democrat in the new 11th District at a pre-opening party in Shrewsbury last Friday for the scoop on her empire-building plan.