Support local music: A weekly gallery listing Jersey Shore shows
Support local music: A new weekly photo gallery on app.com featuring Jersey Shore bands, venues and schedules throughout Monmouth and Ocean counties.
For two years, Pop’s Corner served breakfast, lunch, coffee and baked goods at a busy corner in downtown Point Pleasant Beach. But after the muffins, croissants and pastries coming out of the kitchen proved most popular, owners Brian Neiman and Bruce Fischer have decided to change course.
Pop’s Corner, where dishes like biscuits and gravy, disco fries, sweet and savory toasts, and burgers fill the menu, will serve its last meal on Sunday, Nov. 30, before reopening Monday, Dec. 1, as a bakery and coffee shop.
“We saw the success of the bakery and wholesale and the excitement behind it and (said) let’s keep going with that and see what we can make of it,” said Fischer, who with Neiman also owns Bacarosa, an Italian restaurant in Nutley.
Walk-in customers at Pop’s Corner won’t notice a difference on the bakery and coffee shop side of the space, where sweets including cookies, muffins, cinnamon buns, croissants, banana breads, cake pops, brownies and gluten-free lemon bars are sold.
Some dining room seating will remain, so “people can buy sweet treats at the bakery, coffee, and go sit down at a table and relax,” Fischer said. “We still have music, we have wifi; (it is) a comfortable place to sit and relax.”
The decision to focus on baked goods will allow them to expand the wholesale side of the business, which already includes selling cookies, muffins, croissants and banana bread to Offshore Coffee Co. in Long Branch, Belmar and Asbury Park; all 11 Rook Coffee locations, Hazel Boutique & The Hazelnut Café in Lavallette, Sun & Waves in Spring Lake, country clubs, and companies who gift baked goods to employees and customers.
They hope that focusing primarily on the bakery will get their items into more cafes, markets and stores across the state.
Also, by converting a large portion of the dining room into production space, Pop’s Corner’s bakers can create more custom cakes and pies for local customers.
“Our baker is incredibly talented and has made some real works of art,” Fischer said. “She’s really done some amazing things, and we think there’s some amazing opportunities there.”
Go: 500 Arnold Ave., Point Pleasant Beach; 732-892-1700, popscornernj.com.
Sarah Griesemer joined the USA TODAY NETWORK in 2003 and has been writing all things food since 2014. Send restaurant tips to [email protected], and for more Jersey Shore food news, subscribe to our weekly Jersey Shore Eats newsletter.
link