EVERYONE’S FAVORITE SWEET SPOT
How Smitty’s owner
found her way into
Elon’s heart
Matt Holzapfel
Contributor
@mbolzapfel3
There are 5,189 miles between
Elon and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The
time difference is four hours, and
Abidjan has a population of 4.7 mil
lion, about 4.69 million more people
than there are in the town of Elon.
But both have one characteristic in
common — a love of ice cream.
In 2001, Amy Nakhle was living
in Abidjan with her family when she
realized it was time for a change.
“There had been a coup in 1999
and the economy was falling apart,”
Nakhle said. “The political situation
in the country was falling apart and
we knew we needed to get out.”
When Nakhle told her family she
would be moving back to North
Carolina, they had many questions
including: “What are your plans?”
“We didn’t have any plans,”
Nakhle said. “We had just made the
decision, and so Tom [her brother-
in-law at the time] says, ‘You know
we’ve been thinking about this,
we’ve always wanted to open an ice
cream store, would you be interested
in partnering with us?’ And it was
kind of a no-brainer.”
Five weeks after landing in North
Carolina, Nakhle and her brother-
in-law opened up the first Smitty’s
Homemade Ice Cream shop on
South Church Street, only seven
minutes from Elon University’s
campus.
“We loved ice cream,” Nakhle
said. “We always frequented the lit
tle ice cream store that was in our
neighborhood when we were living
in Abidjan and we had always been
in business for ourselves, so it made
sense to sort of stay entrepreneur
ial and self-employed and so we
jumped on the ice cream dreamwag-
on and that was it.”
But, it wasn’t until 2012 that
Smitty’s finally made its way just
down the road to Elon.
“Elon had actually pursued us
about bringing Smitty’s to down
town Elon,” Nakhle said. “The uni
versity wanted to raise the profile
of the commercial center here and
all small towns want to have an ice
cream store in them. It was a good
fit.”
Offical Pheonix ice cream
Smitty’s currently has two loca
tions, one in Graham on North Main
Street and the other in Downtown
Elon.
There is a Kickstarter campaign
now open to help raise money for
the new location. The page will close
on May 9, and currently has raised
$7,962 of a $20,000 goal.
Even before Smitty’s opened their
Elon location, they were already
the “Official Ice Cream of Elon
University” and had been at all foot
ball and basketball games since 2003.
“We had a good student base
already. The students were already
coming to the store. They liked what
we did,” Nakhle said. “We’re local,
we’re family and very communi
ty-based. We crunched the numbers
and it looked like it was something
that would make sense.”
Despite being the official ice
cream of Elon and wanting to open
an actual store on campus, there
just wasn’t space for it at the time.
Nakhle and her family had to wait
patiently for quite a while.
“We had to really wait for a spot
to open up, it was on our radar for
probably a couple of years before
something actually came through.
As soon as there was an opportunity,
we grabbed it,” she said. “We found
out that John McDonald was going
to be working on this building and
was looking for tenants, probably a
year and a half before they actual
ly started working on the building.
President Leo Lambert had held a
meeting or two with business leaders
in the area to try and drum up some
interest in moving into downtown
Elon a few years before that so it
came on our radar at that time.”
John McDonald, co-owner of
EDG Properties, LLC, played a lead
ing role in the development and con
struction of Park Place at Elon apart
ments, as well as the Elon Town
Center, which houses the Barnes &
Noble at Elon University, Pandora’s
Pies, Smitty’s Ice Cream and office
space for Guy Carpenter, a business
management consultant.
Elon graduates Jeff MacKenzie
’79 andPeterUstach’ll are the own
ers of The Fat Frogg and Pandora’s
Pies. The combination of Pandora’s
and Smitty’s seems to go hand-in-
hand easily and has been beneficial
to both Nakhle, and Jeff and Peter.
“Peter and Jeff, who were the
owners of The Fat Frogg, were
thinking they wanted to take the
entire space. And so we sat down
with them and convinced them that
THE ELON COMMUNITY IS
INCREDIBLY WELCOMING
AND WARM, AND WE
LOVE BEING HERE.
AMY NAKHLE
SMITTY’S OWNER
it would be a really great idea to
partner together to do this,’’she said.
“Even though we are separate enti
ties, we’d share space. They agreed
with us that it made sense to sort of
carry the burden. It’s always a risk
anytime you open a new business
and so to share that risk a little bit
appealed to them. We take up so
little space so it just made a lot of
Night and day
While both current locations
sell the ice cream, Nakhle says they
couldn’t be more different.
“There’s definitely lots of good
energy. Graham has good energy
as well — it’s just of a different
sort. There is very different diversity
between the two locations. Graham
is much more community based, as
in people from Alamance County
having grown up here, been raised
here, have deep roots here — that
small town feel — and just a more
diverse customer base that we have
over there.”
Despite the emptiness of Elon
when students are gone, Smitty’s
still stays open during the sum
mer months.
“Ice cream loves summer, right?
But Elon’s gone in the summer so we
have different seasons, practically,
which is not a bad thing. When Elon
is slower we can concentrate more
on Graham, which is a much fast
er-paced environment at that point,”
she said. “They complement each
other really well.”
She also added that during the
summertime, downtown Elon and
all of its local businesses tends to see
a spike in the number of members
of the local community who come
out. Nakhle and her fellow local
business owners would love to see
even more people walking around
town in the summer, and they still
want to continue to raise the profile
of downtown Elon.
Elon students also make up a
good portion of the staff at Smitty’s,
and Nakhle says that they’re all top-
notch employees.
“I thoroughly enjoy working
with our students, my one com
plaint is that they’re never avail
able. Elon engages them so much
that they don’t have enough time to
work, Nakhle said. “And that’s not a
bad complaint to have.”
Smitty’s will open their third
location in downtown
Burlington at 107 E. Front
Street later this summer.
Nakhle has done every
thing from ice cream
scooper to accountant,
but with the upcoming
opening of her third busi
ness, Nakhle has given
up the scooper for some
checkbooks and extra
time to work with other
businesses in the area to
THE SMITTY’S KICKSTARTER
CAMPAIGN ISOPEN UNTIL MAY 9 IN
HOPES OF RAISING S20,000 FORA
NEW LOCATION. THE CAMPAIGN HAS
RAISEO S7,962 AS OF PUBLICATION.
broaden the reach of the commu
nity.
Small buisness in a small college
town, have no choice but to cater to
the students and faculty that live at or
near Elon. They’re the number one
customers. That being said, the lack
of other customers emphasizes how
important it is for small businesses
such as Smitty’s and Pandora’s to
build strong relationships with those
members of the Elon community.
“It’s been one of the most posi
tive experiences we’ve ever had as a
small business,” Nakhle said about
interacting with the Elon communi
ty since 2012. “The Elon community
is incredibly welcoming and warm,
and we love being here. We love the
students, we love the staff and faculty
and 1 think they love us back, so it’s
really important to us that we have
good relationships with our custom
er base and I think we work hard to
nurture that.”
Sophomore Benton Ashe thinks
that Smitty’s has had a positive
impact on campus. “I think it offers
a good treat for college students,
especially after you just get your
pizza from Pandora’s.”
Ashe said that Smitty’s has the
power to bring people together —
one of the most important things
about them being here on campus.
“People want to have a good time
and treat themselves,” Ashe said.
“Smitty’s is a good place to do both
of those things.”
MARIA HERNANDEZ! Designer