Photo by Mae Pearl's
Cookeville is back to having just one local frozen yogurt shop after Mae Pearl’s Frozen Yogurt closed its doors for good on Wednesday, Sept. 3 after three years of operation.
Mae Pearl’s owners, brothers Russ and Jason Fowler, closed the doors of their S. Jefferson Ave. dessert shop after not being able to turn a desirable profit.
“There were shifts I worked where, for sometimes an hour at a time, there were no customers,” said former Mae Pearl’s employee, Jordan Pace.
In addition to the lack of business, the Fowler brothers wanted to use the time they devoted to Mae Pearl’s to focus primarily on their family construction business, Fowler and Sons Construction Company.
In an effort to keep Mae Pearl’s up and running, the Fowlers casually reached out to select individuals and offered to sell the shop.
“The Fowlers called me one day about a month ago and offered to sell me the shop,” said TTU senior and former Mae Pearl’s employee, Drake Fenlon. “I had told them that I might be interested in purchasing the store at some further time down the road, but because I’m still a student, I had to deny their offer.”
Fenlon went on to describe that the Fowler brothers had told him they were considering selling the store to him due to not having enough time to run their construction company in addition to running a frozen yogurt shop. The Fowlers also told Fenlon that money was not coming in as consistently as once projected.
Some students are saddened by the closing of the local business.
“Mae Pearls was the only (yogurt) place I went to and I’m sad that it’s closed,” said senior journalism student, Reanna Young.
