New South Fayette business features healthy food, drink
Harry Funk/The Almanac
From left, Don and Curt Fignar welcome guests to Tropical Smoothie Café.
South Fayette Township Commissioner Rebecca Sray, left, is joined by daughter Nikki Bilodeau and smoothie-sipping grandchildren, from left, Lucy Bardo, Resse Bilodeau, Levi Bardo and Like Bilodeau.
Better late than, well, during a pandemic.
Entrepreneurial brothers Don and Curt Fignar began welcoming customers July 31 to their new business, Tropical Smoothie Café in South Fayette Township.
“It’s been an adventure,” Curt said. “We started looking at locations about two, two-and-a-half years ago. We finally found this particular location, and then were ready to move forward and break ground in January 2020.”
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Lucy Bardo tries her smoothie.
Plans called for the restaurant to open last April, but of course, COVID-19 intervened.
The brothers, Hampton Township natives, were able to celebrate at least with Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony organized by the South West Communities Chamber of Commerce.
State and South Fayette elected officials joined township staff members and assorted well-wishers, including smoothie-sipping youngsters, for an opportunity to meet the latest local business owners.
“They say persistence is the No. 1 quality of an entrepreneur,” Curt said. “We didn’t think that we’d be sitting around for a year trying to get in the same location we should have opened up in, but we’re here now.”
Tropical Smoothie Café began in 1993 as a small shop along the beach in Florida’s panhandle. The first franchised store opened five years later, and the South Fayette location marks the 980th overall and third in Western Pennsylvania.
“It’s really filling a void in areas like Pittsburgh,” Don said. “That’s one of the main reasons we picked it, because it’s not already saturated here.”
By comparison, Las Vegas, near where Curt now lives, has 27 Tropical Smoothie Café locations, and Michigan boasts more than 100.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Attending the Tropical Smoothie Café ribbon-cutting event are, from left, South West Communities Chamber of Commerce member Joe Verduci; state Sen. Devlin Robinson, R-Bridgeville, and his district director, Alicia McGhee; and Gwen Rodi, president of the South Fayette Township Board of Commissioners.
“With both of us growing up here, we already knew what the kind of top 10 markets are in the area,” Don said. “Focus on those. Narrow it down to ones that we thought were very, very strong out of that group, and whether there was good availability in applicable locations: the right size, the right access, everything that goes into that.”
The South Fayette location is just off Interstate 79, and the demographics appear to be amenable to what Tropical Smoothie Café has to offer.
“When you look at it, you can tell that there are very health-conscious people here,” Curt said.
Along with smoothie drinks, the restaurant offers healthy food choices, including offerings for customers who are vegetarian, like Don, or vegan.
“We have a plant-based ‘chicken’ that they introduced to the brand a couple of years ago,” Don said.
“And we don’t have any fried food, which is awesome for health.”
The brothers hope to open other franchise eventually, and in the meantime, Curt continues to pursue another of his entrepreneurial interests as owner of tfsource.com, “the largest eCommerce retail website for Transformers toys.”
Optimus Prime fans, take note.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Don and Curt Fignar cut the ribbon using South West Communities Chamber of Commerce’s scissors.