LAS VEGAS ECONOMY: Some local business owners profiting during downturn
The rain is coming down in sheets, and weather prognosticators are forecasting snow, but people are still lining up outside the little frozen custard store tucked away behind an AM-PM mini mart, just off Las Vegas Boulevard.
Luv-It Frozen Custard owner Greg Tiedemann diligently mixes custard shakes and dispenses frozen custard cups to die-hards waiting outside in the rain. In spite of temperatures dipping into the mid-40s by the late afternoon, the customers don’t let up long enough for the owner to sit for an interview with a reporter.
Tiedemann and his wife, Sharon, have owned the store since the late 1990s, purchasing it from his grandmother, co-founder Dorothy Woods. Luv-It was opened in the same spot, at 505 E. Oakey Blvd., in 1973, by Dorothy and husband, Richard. Their grandson Greg has found a recession-proof formula to keep it successful: Leave it alone.
"If it’s not broke, why fix it?" he says as he makes an eggnog custard cone. "People take over family businesses and they try to change the whole concept. I tweaked this, but I didn’t change the concept."
Luv-It stays so busy that fretting over the local economy is a luxury Greg can’t afford. Read more:
