Tim and Ronnie Wyatt
For the second location of their sweets shop, a husband-and-wife team is heading north from Stony Point.
Ronnie and Tim Wyatt plan to open a new Pecan Jacks in the Omni Hotel at 100 S. 12th St. next month.
The Wyatts signed a five-year lease for the 891-square-foot Omni space next to Starbucks. The new location will be accessible through the Omni lobby or through the storefront on East Cary Street.
Matthew Mullet of the Shockoe Company helped the Wyatts find the location.
Pecan Jacks sells pralines, pecan brittle, chocolates and other sweets, much of it made in the store.
Pecan Jacks offers pralines flavored with rum, bourbon and spices. Photo by Michael Thompson.
The Wyatts started in 2010 selling pralines mixed with spirits at food and wine festivals. At the time, they were struggling to keep their decades-old printing business alive, which had taken hit with the economic downturn.
“We wanted to try something different,” Ronnie Wyatt said. “We’d always sell (candy) to family and friends, and it took off from there.”
In 2011, they opened a 1,700-square-foot shop and production facility at Stony Point Fashion Park. The Wyatts sold their printing company the next year, and now make between 400 and 500 pralines daily inside their store. Tim Wyatt said mixing in various sorts of liquor with pralines doesn’t just make them taste good. Spirits also act as a preservative, keeping the praline fresh for weeks.
Despite some recent store closings at the Southside mall, the Wyatts are pleased with their experience.
“From our perspective, it’s really good,” Ronnie Wyatt said of Stony Point. “We feel the foot traffic is good.”
The move downtown is Pecan Jacks second attempt at expansion. It opened a store in Norfolk in 2012, but closed it a year later.
“It just wasn’t good fit for us,” Ronnie Wyatt said.
The company has three employees – two of them are family – and is hiring two more. Ronnie Wyatt would not say how much the company is spending to get the Omni storefront up and running.
Ronnie Wyatt said the company did $380,000 in online, mobile and retail sales last year.
Pecan Jacks also sells their sweets online. A box of six pralines goes for $15. Photo by Michael Thompson.
The downtown shop will be smaller than the Stony Point store, but the Wyatts see the new location as a chance to fine tune their operations.
“We decided to open a smaller store to hone our skills on scaling the business so that we can decide if we want to open more locations and franchise,” Ronnie Wyatt said.
Wyatt said eventually she and her husband would like to take their brand of sweets into other historic cities along the East Coast like Savannah, Ga. and Charleston, S.C. She said historic districts are where most of Pecan Jacks competitors operate.
Ronnie Wyatt said the company is launching a more sophisticated website in the fall and may be expanding in Stony Point.
“Next year we will look at moving to a larger space at Stony Point to create a large candy kitchen,” she said.
Tim and Ronnie Wyatt
For the second location of their sweets shop, a husband-and-wife team is heading north from Stony Point.
Ronnie and Tim Wyatt plan to open a new Pecan Jacks in the Omni Hotel at 100 S. 12th St. next month.
The Wyatts signed a five-year lease for the 891-square-foot Omni space next to Starbucks. The new location will be accessible through the Omni lobby or through the storefront on East Cary Street.
Matthew Mullet of the Shockoe Company helped the Wyatts find the location.
Pecan Jacks sells pralines, pecan brittle, chocolates and other sweets, much of it made in the store.
Pecan Jacks offers pralines flavored with rum, bourbon and spices. Photo by Michael Thompson.
The Wyatts started in 2010 selling pralines mixed with spirits at food and wine festivals. At the time, they were struggling to keep their decades-old printing business alive, which had taken hit with the economic downturn.
“We wanted to try something different,” Ronnie Wyatt said. “We’d always sell (candy) to family and friends, and it took off from there.”
In 2011, they opened a 1,700-square-foot shop and production facility at Stony Point Fashion Park. The Wyatts sold their printing company the next year, and now make between 400 and 500 pralines daily inside their store. Tim Wyatt said mixing in various sorts of liquor with pralines doesn’t just make them taste good. Spirits also act as a preservative, keeping the praline fresh for weeks.
Despite some recent store closings at the Southside mall, the Wyatts are pleased with their experience.
“From our perspective, it’s really good,” Ronnie Wyatt said of Stony Point. “We feel the foot traffic is good.”
The move downtown is Pecan Jacks second attempt at expansion. It opened a store in Norfolk in 2012, but closed it a year later.
“It just wasn’t good fit for us,” Ronnie Wyatt said.
The company has three employees – two of them are family – and is hiring two more. Ronnie Wyatt would not say how much the company is spending to get the Omni storefront up and running.
Ronnie Wyatt said the company did $380,000 in online, mobile and retail sales last year.
Pecan Jacks also sells their sweets online. A box of six pralines goes for $15. Photo by Michael Thompson.
The downtown shop will be smaller than the Stony Point store, but the Wyatts see the new location as a chance to fine tune their operations.
“We decided to open a smaller store to hone our skills on scaling the business so that we can decide if we want to open more locations and franchise,” Ronnie Wyatt said.
Wyatt said eventually she and her husband would like to take their brand of sweets into other historic cities along the East Coast like Savannah, Ga. and Charleston, S.C. She said historic districts are where most of Pecan Jacks competitors operate.
Ronnie Wyatt said the company is launching a more sophisticated website in the fall and may be expanding in Stony Point.
“Next year we will look at moving to a larger space at Stony Point to create a large candy kitchen,” she said.