Aurora Hirschfeld and her sisters, Gina and Maria Massi, remember hot summer days when their mother would bring them to the Sundae Palace in New Hyde Park, a place where they could make their own sundaes.
“We were born and raised in New Hyde Park. We were coming to the store when it opened,” Hirschfeld said.
The store at 1115 Jericho Turnpike changed into a chocolate shop in recent years, and three decades after the Massi sisters ate their first sundaes there, they now own and operate the store that occupies a special place in their young memories – and occupies a special place in the business model they’ve developed.
“We are known for the biggest selection of [chocolate] molds. If you want a pig flying, we have it,” Hirschfeld said.
The sisters renovated and painted the store, and transformed it into a combination retail outlet and catering business.
Hirschfeld lives with her husband and three children in Herricks. She said she thoroughly enjoys her interaction with her neighbors, who come in to place orders for catered occasions. A chocolate Noah’s Ark, with a full menagerie of animals lining the deck, and a pair of chocolate ballet slippers with read trim represent her most creative recent efforts.
But many customers come in to buy chocolate in bulk and work their magic with the store’s multitude of clear plastic molds, from animals to pirates to occupation-themed mold sets such as firemen (chocolate helmet, badge and ladder), which they can also buy already made.
“If they don’t know what they’re doing or what they want to do, they know we’ll take the time. We won’t just sell them the chocolate,” Hirschfeld said.
Much of the Sundae Palace business is repeat business, successions of birthdays, bar mitzvahs and first communions for the same children, or word-of-mouth business coming from people who’ve been to one of their parties. One of their regular customers comes three times a year from Connecticut.
It all adds up to 40,000 pounds of chocolate sold each year, Hirschfeld said.
The bulk sales are in form of one-pound, two-pound, three-pound and six-pounds bags of different flavors of chocolate buttons. Some customers buy 50-pound bags, make chocolates from the molds and resell them. The store also produces and sells its own finished candies.
Hirschfeld, who started making chocolate creations “just for the fun of it” when she and her sisters were in New Hyde Park Memorial High School. Friends started asking her to make the chocolates made from different molds as party favors for baby showers, birthdays and other occasions. They told her she should consider selling the chocolate pops and other favors she was making, and while she was in college, she did just that with her sisters.
“We loved it. As we got older, we would do it for our own co-workers,” Hirschfeld said.
After earning her undergraduate and MBA degrees at the New York Institute of Technology, Hirschfeld worked in international sales for Mattel Toys for 10 years, then worked for another toy company, Hit Entertainment, as product manager.
But her love of expressing herself creatively in chocolate continued and she and her sisters started inquiring several year ago about buying the store they knew since children living in the neighborhood. When they finally got a receptive response nearly four years ago, they struck the deal that seemed like their personal destiny.
“I felt like it was so meant to be,” said Gina. “It brought tears to my eyes, like it was meant to happen.”
When she was in third grade at the Holy Spirit School, Gina remembers writing a story about the Sundae Palace for Newsday’s Kids Page.
Gina and Maria work at the store on the weekends, when they’re not at their full-time jobs, working for CIT and Flushing Savings Bank, respectively.
The current financial crisis has slowed business a bit, according to Hirschfeld, who said that orders for corporate gifts have fallen off and people are typically holding more modest parties for special occasions.
She said Sundae Palace also makes its unique chocolate creations free for special occasions at the Ronald McDonald House, local churches, including Holy Spirit, Notre Dame and St. Aidan and the local fire departments.
Youngsters come in with ideas to buy molds to use for special school projects.
“You would think it’s odd, but kid comes in doing a report on Alaska and want to make a caribou,” Hirschfeld said.
Much of the business is seasonal – with party favors for graduations and baseball birthdays big right now – and chocolate flip-flops or seashells particularly popular. Hirschfeld said the peace sign is “really popular” right now was well. So are masquerade-themed parties – with chocolate masquerade masks.
Apart from the interaction with her customers, Hirschfeld enjoys the license customers give her and her sisters to come up with her own concepts.
“People come in and give us the creativity to think out of the box,” she said. “In odd moments, something occurs to me.”
There are frequently unusual requests, like the couple who had an affinity for monkeys and ordered 300 bite-sized monkeys as wedding favors – and the Sundae Palace delivered.
“We really have such nice customers. And they trust us,” Hirschfeld said.
