A beloved Durham popsicle shop will launch a second location in downtown Durham this fall.
LocoShop, an evolution of LocoPops, will open at 600 Foster Street in the space previously occupied by Altered Image Hair Designers.
Billed as “a treats cafe and market rolled into one,” LocoShop will carry just about everything that the flagship LocoPops does, according to owner Summer Bicknell, including housemade popsicles, ice cream, and sweet and savory pies as well as local and gourmet pantry items and prepared meals, beer and wine, greeting cards, and knick-knacks.
Bicknell says she was drawn to both the centrality and the history of the 600 Foster Street space, which was constructed in the late 50s and at one point housed a nightclub called the “Paradise Lounge.”
“We’re fun, we’re funky, we’re OG Durham,” says Bicknell. “So it was great to find a space with all those things too.”
LocoPops opened on Hillsborough Road in 2005. The business’s rise and enduring success could be attributed in part to self-restraint on the part of Bicknell, whose adherence to a single product, gourmet popsicles, made for an airtight brand and a ritualized customer base.
But strictly occupying the frozen treat niche also made brick-and-mortar expansion tough. In the late aughts, she opened two LocoPops locations in Chapel Hill and one in Raleigh but shuttered them when it became clear that traffic wasn’t high enough to sustain the branches year-round.
“Popsicles are definitely a seasonal product, so it never really worked in the winter,” Bicknell says. “After about five years of that, I said, ‘Let’s consolidate.’”
In 2018, LocoPops relocated to a larger space on Hillsborough Road and expanded its menu to include ice cream. Two years later, the pandemic spurred a bigger change.
“There were a lot of great Durham and North Carolina products that all of a sudden didn’t have a way to get their products out to the market because so many stores were closed,” Bicknell says. “We were like, ‘Well, we got a lot of space.’ I had a conversation with Tina at Firsthand Foods and said, ‘We’ve got a lot of freezers. You want to put some of your meat over here?’ She was like, ‘Meat is not a treat, Summer.’ And I was like, ‘I know, but we could do it.’”
At first, it was just a “local corner,” Bicknell continues: skincare products from Lo & Behold, candles from Bright Black, a handful of other local items. Then customers started weighing in on items they’d like to see—bread was a big one, Bicknell says—and Kristin Bedinger, who formerly served as the director of The Durham Hotel and Durham Food Hall, came on board for a time as a consultant to help expand the selection. By January 2021, the local corner had grown to a full-on gourmet neighborhood grocery.
“It was clear that the sundry store really had legs,” Bicknell says. “I kept leaning into it and learning more and refining the concept. Once that kind of really started to be its own thing, I started thinking, do I want to have another location?”
When Altered Image departed from its Foster Street space, Bicknell jumped on the location. She says the sundry selection at LocoShop will be shaped by surrounding neighborhoods, just like the selection at LocoPops is.
“I’m sure it’ll have different rhythms than Old West Durham and Watts Hillandale,” Bicknell says. “We’ll take a lot of stuff over there, and the people who are in the community there will tell us what they need.”
LocoShop will be open Wednesday through Sunday from 12-7 p.m. Its projected opening date is October 1.
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