Business & Tech

Kilwins Chocolates Coming to Doylestown, Owner Wanted

Kilwins, a chocolate maker, staged an open house on Saturday hoping to attract an entrepreneur to run a shop in Doylestown.

Kilwins, a "chocolate kitchen," has the space for a new shop in Doylestown, and the company is now looking for an owner to open it.

Kilwins had posted an "Open House" sign at 6 W. State St.—the empty "40 Love" tennis store—and I put the call out on Facebook to see who knew anything about it.

Doylestown fans responded with the skinny.

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Lisa Barsh Brown was one of the first to reply: “We go to Kilwin's in Florida. Fudge, candy and ice cream. My kids love it. You can smell the waffle cones down the street.”

Indeed, Kilwins, based in Michigan, has franchises all around Florida. There are also Kilwins stores in New York and New Jersey, and one in Gettysburg.

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Steve Titus VP-Franchise Development for Kilwins, wrote in an email, "We have been in business since 1947, are a franchise business model and have 85 stores in the Eastern 1/2 of the USA. Our goal is to open a store in Doylestown."

The poster on State Street was for an Open House, not a Grand Opening, which was noted by another Doylestown fan, and Patch contributor, Jeff Lugar: “That's the thing; there's nothing that says "we're opening a store here," but it's odd that they're doing this franchising come on if they're not.”

Fortunately in our interconnected world, Lugar latched on to a tweet from Julie Tanpitukpong (@jtt718), a commercial leasing agent for Fameco Real Estate in Philadelphia. She staged the Kilwins open house Saturday.

Tanpitukpong confirmed that Kilwins has the location on State Street picked out, across from the Starbucks on Main, but the company is now looking for a franchisee to open it.

"The typical approach is to find a franchisee and then a site," Titus said. "This is not a “Normal” recruiting method in the franchise industry. We have found it to be quite effective when we find a site we like to do this and have had success recruiting when we know the site, costs and rent factors ... Doylestown is a charming town with a neat downtown where people will shop, dine and hang out. This is exactly the place for an impulse store like us."

Titus described Kilwins this way: "We are an impulse store that carries hand-made chocolates, made in store products (fudge, caramel apples, brittles, corns, dipped products like pretzels and strawberries) and an 33 year old original recipe ice cream that is really quite good (kosher, no hormones, no fillers, creamy with a rich butterfat content)."

But is Doylestown big enough for two chocolate shops?

“Love kilwins. Tres expensive. They have great ice cream - $4.95 a serving.” BJ Farsaci Bolton Wasilewski posted on Facebook. “Hope it doesn't hurt Raymers ... they are really the best chocolate store in town. Support the mom & pop businesses ... please!!”


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