It was nearly two years ago to the day that Matthew King, owner of the Taco Box (now The Box East Bay) near the bike path on Child Street, proposed an ambitious vision for the former BD Mart convenience store at 747 Main St., located amidst a highly-trafficked intersection where Route 114 meets the bike path just after exiting downtown Warren.

The idea then was for a spot that had a vendor selling out of a window from within the former convenient store building, with a couple of rotating food trucks selling out in the parking lot area, where people could visit by car or by bike and stay a while to enjoy the various flavors.

The plan took a bit longer than expected when it was pitched a couple years back, but the vision remains basically the same today, and now the hope is that the new spot, dubbed “The Point East Bay” by King, will be open some time this June.

“You get into a project and you start peeling back the layers of the onion. Basically it was a gut job,” King said during an interview on Monday. “I’m looking forward to finally getting opened and getting involved in that part of town and supporting the activity at Burr’s Hull Park and the beach, and I know the neighbors are equally excited for us to to open as well.”

The Point East Bay will feature a variant of The Box East Bay, but instead of focusing on massive tacos like you’ll find at the Child Street location, this version will focus on pizzas, sandwiches, and salads, King said. Alongside that permanent fixture will be two food trucks that rotate perhaps as often as daily.

“The concept is intended to change,” King said of the food offerings from the trucks on site. He said there will be seating for as many as 30 people on picnic tables set up outside.

In addition to the food vendors, King said he still planned on providing some amenities to cyclists, including bike racks and potentially an air compressor to pump up tires.

“We’ll have a water fountain for humans and dogs, maybe a little repair stand if I can find one for a reasonable price,” he said. “A place to relax and reload, and refill.”

As for the inspiration of the name?

“The property itself is triangular in shape and the tip of the property points right to the place where the bike path crosses Main Street,” he said. “It’s a place of convergence.”

Tizzy K’s is coming to town
The Point got an all-star local food business to anchor its brick and mortar section, which will be selling out of a window at the former convenient store space. And if you’re a hardline East Bay-er that refuses to cross the Washington Bridge and have never heard of Tizzy K’s, you’re in for a sweet surprise.

“We’re the highest rated ice cream shop in New England with at least 200 reviews. Right now we’re at a 4.9 on Google, which is basically unheard of,” said Kelly Ireland, co-founder of Tizzy K’s (he’s the ‘K’).

Along with partner Tess (‘Tizzy’) Sullivan, they started the business in 2019 out of Hope & Main, selling their inventive cereal ice cream out of the back of a bicycle near the brand new pedestrian bridge in downtown Providence. You can find them selling their inventive cereal ice cream out of a shipping container near the bridge most days as soon as the weather gets nice.
What’s cereal ice cream, you likely asked?

Although they don’t take credit for creating the idea — they went to the nationally-acclaimed Milk Bar in New York to try out their iteration (which may have been the first), but found their lone variety based on plain Cornflakes to be underwhelming — Ireland and Sullivan took that inspiration and ran with it. They steep their ice cream base for long periods of time in various cereals, everything from the original Golden Grahams to Lucky Charms, Reese’s Puffs, and anything else you can think of, run that through a sieve to ensure a creamy texture, and wind up creating a final product that remarkably tastes like a little piece of childhood.

“But we also knew that everyone is going to think this is a novelty. The only way this is going to work is if we make the best ice cream in the world,” Ireland said. “So we researched and read ice cream books and made batch after batch about how to make the best ice cream in the world.”

With nearly 15,000 followers on Instagram, they have developed quite the following and audience in the years since that first summer. Now, fittingly enough, now they’ll be opening their first brick and mortar just a stone’s throw from where it all began in the shared kitchen space at Hope & Main in Warren.

“Hope & Main is the perfect place to start off. It helps keep costs low when you’re just starting and trying to get some traction. Right now we are pushing the limits there,” Ireland said. “To have a building with AC and electrical already, we’re really excited about it…We already know we can do really well out of a shipping container so we know we can do it.”