Hey, Small Businesses – We See You
Live Music Line-Up: Friday Features Bob Manley Band Nat Graumann Duo Plays Saturday
Football Countdown Is On! Join Us for Season Kickoff Sunday, 9/12!
Small Business Spotlight: Urban Cyclery Shop
A friend recently asked what the Pickett’s team has learned about running a restaurant in the pandemic. The answer: everything and more. Pre-pandemic, we had no takeout and only one pizza oven. When we started out, we had a patio with seven tables – far short of the expansive backyard dining room we’ve evolved to. We started food truck Fridays with live music and $5 draft beers. We simplified our menu and embraced what we call “our lane” – delicious, crowd-pleasing comfort food, an award-winning beer menu, an expansive wine list and quality cocktails.
As a small business that was only six months in when we had to lock down, we are eternally grateful for the support we’ve been shown along the way. It’s the spirit of wanting to pay it forward that led us to start Food Truck Fridays and now, the Small Business Spotlight. We’re lucky to live, work and play in a community that values small businesses and wants them to thrive. Taking this moment to raise a glass to all of you – the thinkers, doers, entrepreneurs, inventors and visionaries – who help keep our community humming. A collective force in fitness, finance, food and beverage, real estate, retail and more. And the creatives – writers, artists, musicians – who literally create beauty out of their brains and hearts and hands – and the many health and mental health professionals who keep us all safe and sane.
On to the Small Business Spotlight … Owner Ozzie Hansen opened the doors to The Urban Cyclery Shop’s Maplewood location at the height of COVID, in April 2020, after signing a lease for its Springfield Avenue storefront just a few months prior. While the timing seemed tenuous at best and disastrous at worst, Ozzie and his wife Glenda got busy fast, thanks to the pandemic-fueled bike boom.
The first Urban Cyclery Shop opened its doors in East Orange, where Ozzie has lived his whole life, in April 2017. After taking up cycling as a hobby in 2011, he quickly identified an issue: there were no full-service bike shops nearby. Even Newark, the state’s largest city, was a bike shop desert. Ozzie decided to make it right … and went all the way. He enrolled in Barnett’s Bicycle Institute in Colorado Springs – one of the country’s pre-eminent schools for bicycle mechanics – and earned certification in a range of maintenance and repair categories.
His mission: to create a convenient and welcoming full-service shop that would offer quality bikes, parts and accessories at affordable prices, and provide highly trained mechanics for maintenance and repair. Stop by one of their stores or check them out at www.theurbancycleryshop.com.
No food truck this Friday, but plenty of $5 draft beers and music by Bob Manley Band. Saturday’s entertainment is Nat Graumann Duo.
Football season starts a week from Sunday, so mark your calendars for 9/12. The screens, the beverages and the game-time menu are ready to go and waiting for kickoff!
Want to hear more about Pickett’s upcoming events and specials, join our email list!