Oct 23, 2008

The sweet spice of life: Sweet Thoughts celebrates 10 yearsBy Daniel DeMainaWickedLocal.com

Melrose, MA — The usual motif is the bartender at the neighborhood pub, towel slung over one shoulder, apron around the waist and two hands on the bar, asking the regular, “Whattsamatta, bub?”

Except in Melrose, where the neighborhood pub is instead a gift shop named Sweet Thoughts — and is celebrating its 10th anniversary on Main Street next month — at least according to co-owner Carl Caratozzolo.

“Once you get to know these people for a long time, they’ll come in and you can see someone’s a little down,” Caratozzolo said. ” You ask, ‘Is something wrong?’ Then you start talking. You become almost a little bit of a psychologist to people. They feel close to you because they’ve known you so long.”

During Caratozzolo and co-owner Jerry Pulaski’s 10 years in Melrose, they’ve watched the children of their regular shoppers grow up and they’ve developed friendships with people throughout the community, all through a gift shop that is as wildly varied — women’s blouses, chocolates, ottomans and more are spread around the shop — as the people who come through the front door.

“It’s not necessarily something that happens everywhere,” he said. “We were 11 years in the other store [the first Sweet Thoughts was in Brookline]. The same phenomenon never happened. Not that rapport with customers. It was a different type of customer. A little more distant. It was cordial, but not the same. Here it’s really become a closeness, a close-knit group that comes in, knows us, feels comfortable with us.”

There are many things that draw Melrosians into Sweet Thoughts — the attractive window displays created by Caratozzolo, or perhaps the thoughtful smiles and open ears — but it may just be the variety of quality merchandise that keeps them coming back.

“A lot of customers, they come in here, especially during the holidays, and they’ll say it’s one-stop shopping,” Pulaski said. “They can buy confections here, they can buy their wives a beautiful piece of jewelry, we sell furniture. We have quite a variation of different things. We haven’t put ourselves into one particular area to sell one thing. With the variation of all the different things we sell, it makes it a much more interesting shop.”

Even the music has variety in Sweet Thoughts. On this particular Tuesday morning, string-heavy classical music floats throughout the store, though it’s hardly the piped-in, cookie cutter music heard in department stores.

“We really take the time to really select what we play,” Caratozzolo said. “We choose the things that we like to play. So many people come in and discuss music and ask, ‘Who is that, what is that?’ We’ve turned more people on to different things and given people many, many CDs, different music that they now love.”

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