There’s an exciting new food shop in Pleasantville, which is really like 25 restaurants rolled into one.
The village welcomed Wonder on March 20, the rapidly expanding food delivery and takeout service, which moved into about half of the empty retail space at 70 Memorial Plaza. It is the 39th location for Wonder, mostly in the tristate area, and the fourth to open in Westchester County, following previous incursions into Scarsdale, Larchmont and West Harrison.
What makes Wonder unique are the vast array of restaurants whose food can be ordered on its app, through its website or in person. Many of the acclaimed partner restaurants and chefs – as diverse as Bobby Flay Steak, Texas Barbecue, Yasas by Michael Symon, which is Mediterranean cuisine, and Brooklyn’s famed Di Fara Pizza – are noted eateries from throughout the United States that are represented at the Pleasantville location featuring a wide assortment of tasty cuisine.
“It’s kind of a very unique proposition, and what’s really cool about our model is you can access all of these 20-plus restaurants in a single order, and they come out at the same time, piping hot, made to order, also available for pick-up and dine-in as well,” said Daniel Shlossman, chief growth and marketing officer for Wonder. “So, it’s a really unique model.”
Wonder’s opening is the latest jolt of excitement for Pleasantville’s downtown. Long buoyed by the Jacob Burns Film Center, which has brought crowds for nearly 25 years, the central business district has been flourishing with the opening of new businesses and two major mixed-use projects at 70 Memorial Plaza and at 39 Washington Avenue. The two buildings combine for more than 100 apartments.
Businesses, including Lulu’s Kitchen, and Hudson Dental Co., which took over half the space of the old Pleasantville Pharmacy on Wheeler Avenue, have contributed to maintaining and enhancing a vibrant downtown.
For Chamber of Commerce President Bill Flooks, the ability for visitors and many village residents to walk through downtown Pleasantville helps drive customers to businesses.
“I think the only thing it can do is help because you’re bringing more people in, they’ve got to shop somewhere, and again, when they park their car, they can walk to anything that they need except to Home Depot or Berger Hardware. I think there are enough shops around Pleasantville where you can get what you need,” Flooks said.
Foodies Delight
Aside from the Jacob Burns, the multitude of restaurants and other food-related businesses that attract diners into the downtown has played a significant part of Pleasantville’s success. Flooks said the community has become “a foodie town,” which helps other establishments as well.
“Everybody comes to eat stuff, and depending on when you come in, it’s going to bring you into the other shops if they’re still open,” he said.
Mayor Peter Scherer said Pleasantville has been able to navigate a changing world where much of traditional retail has moved online, so the community is grateful for the support of new establishments like Wonder. Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, old surveys found that more than half of village residents’ retail dollars were spent in the downtown, he said.
“It’s clearly a world that no longer exists, but responding to the changing world we’ve actually been very successful in attracting new food and service kind of businesses, which continue to prosper. I dare to say the average Pleasantville resident spends more on restaurants and take-out food than then they did a generation ago,” Scherer said.
Now adding to those choices is Wonder. Shlossman said while there are about a dozen locations in Manhattan and several others in Brooklyn and Queens, the majority of their outlets are in the suburbs, of Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and more recently Connecticut. The company, which was launched by entrepreneur Marc Lore in 2019, has a goal of greater density in areas where the clientele will tend to eat out regularly.
Another objective is to make sure that deliveries are made to the customer within a maximum of 30 to 35 minutes from the time the order is placed. They deliver within a radius of about 10 minutes in the city and several minutes longer in the suburbs, he said.
“It allows for a better customer experience overall when it gets to your door,” Shlossman said. “Ultimately, when you order that pizza hot, you want it to be hot when it gets to you. You don’t want to turn on the oven and pop it in the oven to reheat it. So that’s what’s really, really interesting for us, and that’s what makes a lot of sense for us to densify and keep our locations pretty close together.”
One of the few laments that Scherer has is that most new Pleasantville businesses seem to be food related.
“Apparently, we’re living in a world where everyone is interested in food,” Scherer said. “It’s much harder to get anyone to invest in bricks and mortar retail.”
Pleasantville in a Good Place
Several downtown merchants agreed that Pleasantville is one of the top places to be in the area. Enzo Cutaia, owner of Fleetwood Bakery on Wheeler Avenue, said having a spot that can draw customers with a healthy supply of foot traffic is beneficial to most businesses.
“We’re a draw for the other stores in a neighborhood, and it goes the other way. There’s so many good restaurants and delis here, so when they go to those places, they’re looking around and they come shop at Fleetwood Bakery. So, it benefits everybody.”
Having multiple attractive businesses and destinations nearby is also an advantage for Second Mouse Cheese on Manville Road. Located across the street from the Jacob Burns Film Center, it’s also a draw in its own right as one of only three cheese stores in Westchester, according to owner Ivy Ronquillo.
There are always challenges – economics, parking, spiking food and utility prices and the recent Manville Road construction, to names several – but generally much of Westchester can withstand fiscal downturns, she said.
“This location was too good to be true,” said Ronquillo, who opened Second Mouse six years ago. “I think this space was twice the size that I wanted and just about twice the expense but being across the street from Jacob Burns gave me kind of a built-in clientele. It didn’t take much to reach the folks who go to Jacob Burns, who are more likely to go to specialty food markets as well.”
Michael Kagan, a partner at Root 2 Rise NY, a plant-based café on Manville Road, said Pleasantville is an excellent community to have a niche business where there isn’t much competition. Many customers are looking to know where their food is coming from as well as the ingredients.
There have been drawbacks, mainly because of the construction surrounding Manville Road streetscape. Root 2 Rise NY opened in 2021.
“The area, overall, it’s a good place to be,” Kagan said. “Just the last few years there’s a good number of changes going on and I know for a fact that businesses have been hurt by that.”
Minimal Vacancies
While definitive figures about downtown storefront vacancies weren’t readily available, Flooks estimated that it was likely below a manageable 20 percent. A large vacancy on the ground floor at 39 Washington Avenue will eventually be filled by the pharmacy White’s Apothecary. Scherer said the pharmacy is paying rent and he expects the storefront to be filled by the fall.
Elsewhere, the only major vacancies are half of the space that had been occupied by Pleasantville Pharmacy and in the recently departed King’s Scribe storefront, both on Wheeler Avenue, the old Florsheim shoe store location on Pleasantville Road where a deli and convenience story went out and the remaining 3,000 square feet of empty retail space at 70 Memorial Plaza.
“We have a few spaces, but relative to many downtowns, I think it’s been pretty vibrant,” Scherer said. “I’m pretty optimistic that at least reasonably priced retail spaces get turned into something.”
