E-Town awaits, but we’ll always have roots in Hershey
Baby Blue Spruce on the Hershey History Center’s front lawn.
The idea for Stay started in my Hershey home nearly a decade ago.
Our first pop-up event was in Hershey in fall 2017. We’ve participated in downtown Hershey’s Market on Chocolate more summer Saturdays than any other vendor, with a few more scheduled this year.
In December 2023, we opened a holiday store, the incomparably named Holly Jolly Trolley Stop Pop-Up Shop, in the unheated trolley building at the Hershey History Center. The next June, we opened a permanent store in the history center’s Milk House building.
Permanence, it turns out, doesn’t mean forever.
I’ve made no bones about the difficulty we’ve had attracting enough foot traffic in Hershey. E-Town’s bustling downtown, with its focus on locally owned businesses, is the right move for us.
Makers market continues
But we’ll always have roots in Hershey. In addition to the aforementioned evidence, there’s the quarter-century and counting that I’ve lived in Hershey.
We’re in year seven of renovating our modest bungalow, and I’d like to see it through to completion (at least as complete as home improvement ever gets).
Stay will continue to host its makers market on the history center’s front lawn. We hope to be part of Choctoberfest in downtown Hershey on Oct. 10. On Dec. 6, we’ll hold our fifth annual Englewood Makers Market in Hershey’s west end.
And then there are the literal roots emanating from the Baby Blue Spruce tree we recently donated to the history center. It lies between the trolley building and the history center’s sign.
The visible part of the tree can reach 20 to 30 feet in height; its roots will grow in kind, maybe spreading to two to three times the tree’s canopy.
The tree could live 50 to 100 or more years. That’s a decent legacy for our small business, born and bred in Hershey.