Sugar and Plumm, Purveyors of Yumm – Horrible place to work. | Glassdoor

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Sugar-and-Plumm-Purveyors-of-Yumm-RVW1517631.htm

Is this what Sugar and Plumm is going to be like?

Sugar and Plumm to open second Manhattan location | Chain Store Age

http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/sugar-and-plumm-open-second-manhattan-location

A Bad Batch?

Sugar and Plumm’s baking was put to a taste test recently in northern New Jersey, and the results weren’t pretty.

The Record, a northern New Jersey newspaper, recently assessed the macarons available from five local establishments, including Sugar and Plumm’s Paramus location. A macaron, as the Record explains, is “a sandwich cookie of ground almonds, egg whites and sugar with a smooth filling.” Purveyors of macarons are indeed proliferating, which is one reason the paper decided to do a taste test.

Unfortunately, Sugar and Plumm’s offering faired poorly. According to the paper:

Macarons purchased at Sugar and Plumm, the café, pastry shop and candyland that opened in the Bergen Town Center last summer with the slogan “purveyors of yumm”, were bashed as fake- and chemical-tasting. Its new strawberry flavor was compared to strawberry Quik milk powder, bubble gum, cotton candy and scented Strawberry Shortcake stickers. [Emphasis mine.]

To use a culinary term: Yick.

Perhaps it was a bad batch.

Look, now that Sugar and Plumm has occupied the entire ground floor of a building in my Upper West Side neighborhood, I hope they either succeed or fail quickly.

No one wants storefronts in their neighborhood to stay empty for long. Some commentators (often from other parts of town) cited the empty storefronts as a reason to cheer the arrival of Sugar and Plumm on the Upper West Side. But they overlook the fact that those storefronts were emptied of their tenants by the landlord specifically to attract a deeper pocketed tenant, which turned out to be Sugar an Plumm. By the time it finally opens here, those storefronts will have been dormant from nearly two to nearly three years. Sugar and Plumm’s opening seems likely to have been delayed by its aggressively inappropriate facade design, which was rightly rejected by the Landmarks Preservation Committee, necessitating a redesign before construction could begin.

According to some research, up to 50 percent of restaurants fail before the third anniversary of their opening.  I expect Sugar and Plumm will thrive here. But it would be ironic and sad if Sugar an Plumm didn’t last at least as long as the vacancies that made room for it.

Positive Changes to the Design of Sugar and Plumm’s UWS Store

We’ve heard some good things about how Sugar and Plumm revised their design following the harsh rejection they faced in their first appearance in front of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Landmark West, a local organization dedicated to preserving the historical character of the Upper West Side, was in attendance at the public meeting and shared the following notes.  These are not official minutes from the public review.  If you are interested in obtaining audio recording of the review, Landmark West says they are happy to assist (and provide contact info).

The details, as presented by the LPC staff member assigned to the project:

• Candy cane lights originally proposed have been removed, no longer a part of the proposal
• The antiqued mirrored glass on which the store can write their menu have been downsized (the exact dimensions or proportion of change was not verbalized)
• Bulkheads (the areas below the windows, near the ground) which were once proposed in stucco are now to be realized in polished granite
• Less lettering will be displayed on the awning skirts (the exact words on each awning were not verbalized)
• Citing a historic photo recently located on the NYPL Digital Libraries (which DNA Info’s Leslie Albrecht found and shared in her recently published article on this project), the applicant now proposes that the facade will have more dimensionality and intends to recess all of the entrances, to hearken back to the historic precedent in the photo.

Upper West Side Neighborhood Retail Streets

Tonight Laura Smith of the Department of City Planning presented a proposal for stopping the trend of big banks and large stores taking over what used to be small shopfronts on the the Upper West Side. I think it’s an inspired proposal and I think it would do the trick. Have a look here.

Hearing Tomorrow about Protecting Mom and Pop Stores on the UWS

Please attend this if you are interested:

http://www.dnainfo.com/20120117/upper-west-side/public-weigh-on-protecting-uws-mom-pop-stores

Tomorrow night, Jan. 18.

Mr. Tierney, please consider these comments

Dear Mr. Tierney,

I am writing about the project at 173-175 West 78th Street, aka 379-381 Amsterdam Avenue, the application to install new storefront infill and mechanical equipment. This project is to develop a new location for a candy store/restaurant chain called “Sugar and Plumm.” I just learned today that the LPC will be hearing from the architect on this project tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17. I am so sorry for the last minute comment. I do hope you have an opportunity to see this before you hear the plans from the architect.

As you know, the applicant first appeared before the Commission on December 20, 2011. I and several of my neighbors spoke at that hearing. We were deeply distressed by the plans, which we felt were disrespectful of the historic character of the neighborhood in many ways. In my own comments I urged the Commission to ask the applicant to tone down their design.

During the Commission’s subsequent discussion I was gratified to hear that the Commission also felt the project could not be approved as presented. Terms the commissioners used when discussing the design included “appliqué,” “cutesy,” and “disheartening.” They found that the design “tarts up” rather than “respects the building.” One commissioner complained that the designer was not “looking at the building: This could be anywhere.” “Let the building speak for itself,” declared another. Condemning the design as more of a “valentines card” than a building, one of commissioners said unequivocally that the proposed “lighting fixtures are not appropriate for a building with this kind of dignity.”

It seems clear that the applicant intends to build a heavily branded, suburban-style retail experience in keeping with its first store, which opened recently in a Paramus, NJ mall, rather than the retail experience that is typical of this historic district, namely, small shops “established to serve the needs of the immediate community” as the landmark designation report says. The designation report also says that the architecture in the district has the effect of “clearly separating the ground-story shopfronts into discreet units,” something that the proposed shop’s excessive branding, exterior decorative lighting and awnings will undermine.

I believe that this project will create the single longest store frontage in the entire Amsterdam Avenue historic district, a fact that in itself degrades the character of the neighborhood in my opinion. I hope such developments will be rare or even prohibited in the future. And I hope that with the guidance of the LPC, the aesthetic and cultural damage caused by this project can be kept to a minimum.

I respectfully request that the LPC again hold the applicant to the high standards you are known for and insist that the design you approve be appropriately muted and consistent with the historic character of Amsterdam Avenue.

Sincerely,

David Schatsky