BRIGHTON — A downtown bakery with products in national stores has closed their retail shop in Brighton thanks to streetscaping construction, a co-owner told The Daily.
Total Cluster Fudge co-owner Alisa Shakespeare said the shop at 124 W. Main St. is no more, and the business is looking to move their headquarters elsewhere.
“We’re going to reach out to Milford, South Lyon, and Howell to see if we can move our corporate offices there, because we’ve had a belly full of Brighton,” Shakespeare said.
Their lease expires in November, so they’ve put the retail business up for sale — but Shakespeare doesn’t expect it will stay a Total Cluster Fudge, because they’re not set up for franchising.
“We chose to make Brighton home and they completely screwed us,” she said.
The bakery, she said, doesn’t need to have a retail storefront, because most of the multi-million dollar company’s revenue comes from selling products wholesale to other retailers, including Meijer, Speedway, USA2GO and Costco. They recently landed a deal with Walmart.
“Fortunately for us, we didn’t have to open the store, because we’re in 25,000 stores nationwide,” she said. “My anger is, what if my life, my kids, all depended on this being successful? They are so disconnected from reality. You are messing with people’s lives, their family, for nice sidewalks.”
She said they opened the retail store because they wanted to be “civically-minded” and not open a close-door business that wouldn’t generate any foot traffic downtown.
The streetscape project is expected to continue through October. Construction downtown began in January with an approximately $1.2 million watermain replacement project. The city, in partnership with the Brighton Downtown Development Authority, bonded more than $7.8 million for streetscaping construction on Main Street between Grand River Avenue and First Street, and Grand River Avenue between St. Paul and North Street.
The city is narrowing Main Street and widening sidewalks, revamping a portion of the Mill Pond Park, and completing other changes to the downtown streetscape, including crossings, lighting and plantings.
City officials have previously said the new streetscape and narrower road will increase pedestrian safety, slow traffic, make downtown more accessible to people with disabilities, and better accommodate civic events.
Total Cluster’s retail revenue, Shakespeare said, dropped about 70 percent.
“Last year, in the summer, we used to see more than 200 (customers on a busy weekend day),” she said. “We see maybe 25-30 (now).”
The bakery’s downtown retail store opened in 2019, just months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. They’d bounced back by 2022.
“Our sales were higher during COVID than they were during the streetscape. That’s how devastating it is,” Shakespeare said.
The retail store, she said, had more than 3,000 transactions between January and June 2022, and they saw about half of that in the same time period this year, as well as lower sales per transaction.
They’re not the only downtown Brighton business to cite streetscaping construction as a reason for shutting their doors — and others have reported lost revenue.
More:After months of changes, Ginopolis’ in Brighton might be closing for good
Just last week, owners at Ginopolis’ Bar-BQ Smokehouse announced on social media they’ll close at the end of the month and might not reopen at all.
Shakespeare said city officials should’ve made a plan to offset revenue loss for downtown businesses and should rezone properties to support retail over service industry businesses in the future.
“Let’s see lost revenue,” she said. “That’s the real number, that’s the real fallout and carnage.”
— Contact reporter Jennifer Eberbach at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com.
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