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The C Shop tradition carries on...
Thirty
years ago on June 26 when the C Shop opened, there were
no sandwiches, baked goods or pizza, and many of the delectable
candies you’ll find on the C Shop shelves nowadays
hadn’t been thought of yet.
From the very first day, however, cotton candy, snowcones,
licorice ropes, candy sticks, penny candy and white chocolatehave
been available to C Shop customers. By the end of the first
week of business, the C Shop was making its own crispy caramel
corn and delicious caramel apples and suckers. Even though
the caramel on the first batch of apples was a bit chewy,
the customers kept returning for candies that were made
with the philosophy, “The only substitute for experience
is quality.”
This year on Tuesday, June 26, the C Shop celebrated its
30th anniversary. Several of those first year’s products
were featured for an hour that day at their original prices.
A peek at C Shop history in photos and scrapbooks will be
available throughout the week. The original C Shop whale
will be on display along with all his successors.
Special prizes (including an inflatable kayak and a ticket
for two to the Boys & Girls Club “Dance on the
Dockside”) will be given on Saturday, June 30. Also
the C Shop’s traditional anniversary treat, a Peanut
Butter Yummmm, will be given away every open hour from June
26 through June 30.
The C Shop was begun originally in 1971 by Pat and Pat Alesse
in a corner of Shore Acres Resort. Shore Acres, owned by
Barbara and Ernie Jacobs, included their home, a grocery
store, a pub, a clothing shop and 30 rental cabins, before
it was sold to become the present day Jacob’s Landing
Condominiums. The present location of the C Shop is the
intersection of Birch Bay Drive and Alderson Road. The original
building was on that site by 1898 and was Birch Bay’s
first resort business and the site of the first Old Settlers
Picnic. The building has been added on to numerous times
and has housed a variety of businesses over its lifetime.
Expanding to fit the big yellow building, the Alesses have
added a sandwich shop and bakery to the original candy store.
Because the C Shop was designed to compliment Patrick’s
job as a third grade teacher in Blaine, the C Shop began
as a summer only business. In spite of Patrick’s retirement
from teaching in 1993 and the growing year round population
at Birch Bay, the C Shop is still open “summers only”
so Pat and Pat can enjoy a bit of “retirement”
in the fall at least. The mid-May opening weekends are harbingers
of summer for residents and visitors to Birch Bay. Many
eagerly await the mid June through Labor Day daily access
to the treats at the C Shop. The teacher influence is easily
seen around the C Shop as customers get drawn into the game
of figuring out “Why the C Shop is called the C Shop?”
(Is it because it is by the sea, because you see the bread
and candy being made, because it is the candy shop, because
so many things start with “C,” because it is the
Alessee shop, or is it because it is a Whale of a place
to go? Only a teacher would plan “all of the above”
as the correct answer.)
From January to Easter the C Shop is bustling with wholesale
production of Easter bunnies which can be found in many
stores from Whatcom County to Issaquah and Seattle. The
C Shop does open two weekends before Easter for retail sales
of their Easter chocolates.
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