Red Mango Returns with Concerned Eye Toward Summer

As Scott Buda sat in his frozen yogurt shop in Long Beach on Tuesday answering questions about his recovery from Hurricane Sandy, he suddenly stated what many other business owners in town are undoubtedly thinking.

“We have to be realistic about it: this summer is going to be rough,” said Buda, who reopened his independently-owned Red Mango on March 1 after it took three feet of flooding during Hurricane Sandy. “We’ll have to play it by ear and do the best that we can.”

Buda estimated that about 50 percent of his customers last summer were beach-goers coming off the train at the Long Island Rail Road station, a stone’s throw from his shop at 32 E. Park Ave., which he opened in March 2012. Business boomed beyond expectations.

Now he’s one of many business owners in town bracing for what this summer may bring, as uncertainty looms about rebuilding the beach and boardwalk that help attract considerable foot traffic to the city’s central business district. But given last summer’s success, Buda has confidence his shop can bounce back.

“We did so much more business than we anticipated last year,” he said. “So we knew the people here were going to be very eager for us to get back open again.”

Toward that goal, he and his landlord had to rip out and rebuild the walls and regrout the tiled floors to ward off any mold. During the four months his doors were closed, he was able to route some employees to his other Red Mango store in Hewlett, which he opened last September and had similar success.

The Long Beach store now features new furniture and cabinets, and still offers 60 flavors of frozen yogurt ranging from peach to peanut butter to, you guessed it, mango. Free wifi was also restored, and Buda hopes patrons will return, plug in their laptops and kickback in his refurbished store.

“Our main focus right now is we wanted to get reopened so that the people that live in Long Beach have a place to go,” he said. “They showed us that they enjoyed our store and it was up to us to get back as quick as we can and send them as many offers as we can to entice them to come back.”

As owner of an independent Red Mango, a franchise with some 200 stores nationwide, Buda has the liberty to run it as he sees fit, from running his own promotions to offering giveaways to attract customers. His strategy is to run successive promotions right into summer. Already he’s dropped the price of smoothies to $2, down from $4.95-$5.75.  Later this month he plans to run ads for free toppings, buy-one-get-one-free yogurts and smoothies, and $2 off any purchase of $6 or more.

“We’re trying to diversify right now as much as we can to entice people who may be having a tough time to let them know they can get something refreshing and save them a couple of bucks,” he said.

If Sandy’s forcing Buda to close his business and lose income for four months wasn’t enough, the Oceanside resident also had to contend with flood water invading his home, the loss of a car, and living without power for two weeks, as well as cutting down seven trees on his oversaturated property.  

“It was a lot to handle,” he said. “But every time I got depressed about it I would always read about somebody who had it worse off than I did. Some of the houses down in Breezy Point that went on fire. It was just horrifying.”

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