Fast Company, one of the nation’s leading magazines on entrepreneurship, has highlighted several Cranbury shops in a forthcoming article on small but profitable businesses.
The article, titled “Micro-business: Turning Profits in a Shoe Box,” highlights small business owners who have maximized their profitability by keeping overhead costs excessively low. The Cranbury businesses cited in the article were Gil & Bert’s, Cranbury Delights, The Cranbury Cobbler and Cranbury Pizza.
“Sure, it’s business school 101 that reducing costs will help your bottom line,” said Josh MacDougal, the Sr. Editor at the magazine who wrote the article. “But it’s simply amazing what extreme measures some of these small business owners take when it comes to their own working conditions. I mean, in some cases they might be better off spending eight hours in solitary confinement at their local county prison.”
The following is an excerpt from MacDougal’s article covering the Cranbury businesses he highlighted:
Small town, small business(es)
Perhaps no town in the U.S. has as great a concentration of micro-businesses than Cranbury, N.J. This historic hamlet, a key thoroughfare during Colonial times, features some of the tiniest — but yet quite profitable — businesses on our list. While charming, Cranbury real estate is very expensive, forcing its only thriving businesses into ridiculously miniscule quarters.
Cranbury Delights is a gourmet confectionary nestled into a aging storefront on Cranbury’s Main Street. Its owners and operators, the husband-and-wife team of Agnes and Steve Toth, churn out over 30 pies, 80 gallons of ice cream and 4,000 pieces of chocolate per week. They somehow accomplish all of this despite having only 10 square feet of usable work space in their cramped shop. “Our customers sometimes think we’re having intercourse the way Agnes [Toth] and I have to climb all over each other while we work,” said owner Steve Toth. Despite the shop’s scant accommodations, the Toths say sales in their store have increased three-fold over the past year alone.
The owner of Gil & Bert’s, a popular ice cream destination in Cranbury that sits directly across from Cranbury Delights, realized a creative — if not somewhat crazy — way to keep costs low: he turned his home’s living room into a walk-up dessert window. Once all the necessary equipment and supplies were added, however, the owner realized he had left himself only five square feet to work in. What’s worse, because the former living room is several feet above the ground level, the shop’s workers (the owner among them) find themselves stooping through the service window most of the day. “On many a day I feel like Quasimodo had he been chained to a set of freezer chests for eight hours,” said the shop’s owner. “Even though we’re making money by the scoopful here, I have to admit there are plenty of days when I just want my old living room back.”
Think that’s bad? Picture working in a fully enclosed, non-lighted tool shed that abuts a wood-fired pizza oven — in August! That’s exactly what you’ll find at Gil & Bert’s neighboring business: The Cranbury Cobbler. Though he has more work than he can handle in “10 years,” the shop’s owner, Pierre Dujue, has refused to make even the most modest of improvements – including windows – to his 4 ft x 3 ft studio for more than 20 years. “I decided long ago I’d rather have a cramped and crappy studio and drive a Bentley than the other way around,” said Dujue.
Next to Dujue’s studio sits one of Cranbury’s other micro-destinations: Cranbury Pizza. Despite its diminutive footprint (just 18 square feet rounded up), the popular pizzeria features a full wood-burning stove (Mr. Dujue’s nemesis in the summer), a mammoth glass service case, and twenty tables and booths supported by up to a dozen workers per shift. “The atmosphere is total crowded subway car,” said one patron. “But if that’s the price to pay for great pizza, I’ll take it.” The shop’s owners say their low monthly rent and utility bills allow them to “make a ton of dough.”
Steve Toth, the owner of Cranbury Delights, said he was tickled to be profiled in the magazine.
“I was literally flipping a crêpe when Agnes [Toth] yelled back and said some guy from Fast Company wanted to talk to me about our shop,” he said. “Needless to say I lost track of the crêpe and it ended up burning my arm pretty badly, but that’s OK, this is really exciting stuff.”
The article will be in the November issue of Fast Company, which hits newsstands (most of which are larger than those Cranbury businesses profiled) on 21 October.
Photo: Folks crowd into Cranbury Pizza on a recent Friday night
