A Fort Worth ice pop shop is reopening. But then it’ll close forever due to COVID-19.
Alchemy Pops finally has a neighborhood to serve, but now it’s closing.
After two years, the gourmet frozen pop shop in South Main Village is taking a victory lap of sorts, opening Saturday and closing permanently Aug. 1 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Alchemy, 411 S. Main St., will open weekends only in June and July before closing, owner Carolyn Phillips said in an announcement.
Phillips wrote that Alchemy’s existence “relies on large social gatherings” and as a result, “this pandemic will cost her her pop shop.”
Phillips started her shop in 2015 as a catering business with an ice pop cart she bought off Craigslist. That before frozen treats became as common and about the same time as when Alabama-based fancy ice pop stand Steel City Pops moved into Fort Worth.
Alchemy went full-time in 2016 and opened as one of the first retail shops in South Main Village, in the early days of Shipping & Receiving Bar back when Cannon Chinese and Jesús BBQ Family Restaurant were about the only restaurants.
Alchemy’s small-batch pops competed with Steel City, which remains open, and ice creams at South Main Village neighbor Gypsy Scoops, plus PopBar in WestBend.
(The industry is also facing a tectonic shift because more customers are rejecting milk products for children. Curly’s Frozen Custard, for example, now also serves almond-milk custard.)
Alchemy is open Saturday and Sunday afternoons through Aug. 1; 817-502-2026, alchemypops.com.
This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
