Business Community
A new shop coming to the Olympic Village shopping center hopes to hit the sweet spot of being a successful business while providing employment opportunities for people who need them the most.
Emphasis on sweet.
Couple of Scoops, an ice cream and candy shop, plans to open in early May in the location previously occupied by GameStop. It will employ adults with special needs, a passion for owner Jim Ciaciuch.
He already operates Couple of Socks, a store in Tacoma Mall that sells novelty footwear and employs adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
Ciaciuch was inspired in both endeavors by his daughter Molly, an autistic adult.
“Education is there for people with special needs and things like that,” Ciaciuch said. “But once they get out of high school, there’s nothing there. … They just kind of get cut off.”
Posters announce that Couple of Scoops, an ice cream and candy shop, is coming to the former GameStop location in Olympic Village. Photo by Vince Dice
Sweet idea
That’s why he opened Couple of Socks in 2023: To provide jobs for Molly and her friends. As a Gig Harbor resident, Ciaciuch wanted to bring the same concept to this side of the bridge.
That’s how he got his sweet idea.
Ciaciuch plans to sell soft-serve and scooped ice cream; gluten- and dairy-free ice cream; floats, shakes, taster flights, pints to go, and more. The menu is far from finalized, but ice cream flavors might include lemon blueberry swirl, salty caramel and raspberry sorbet.
The candy area will feature barrels of pre-wrapped retro candy, about 200 options for bulk candies and other goodies that will make your dentist frown.
Its nostalgic look will invoke ice cream parlors from the 1960s and ’70s.
“I want it to be a place that people can come in and not just have a great treat, but just enjoy being in a place that really is a community,” Ciaciuch said. “We’re helping people grow in and of themselves and helping them meet some really cool people.”
Special employees
Ciaciuch described Gig Harbor as a community “that’s bursting with special needs adults who are looking for work.”
Work is crucial for special-needs adults, and not just so they can earn money.
“It gives them some normalcy,” said Rebecca McCain, a senior employment consultant with Trillium Employment Services. Trillium is a nonprofit that helps special needs adults find work, and McCain is Molly Ciaciuch’s job coach. “Our clients see their peers every day, people in their community, that are going to work. (A job) gives them this outlet to make friends, to be social, to be a part of the society and part of the community.”
Ciaciuch said working at Couple of Socks made Molly “more self-confident, more vocal, more interactive.” He’s seen similar changes with just about every other employee at the Tacoma Mall store.
Jim and Molly Ciaciuch at the Couple of Socks store in Tacoma Mall. Photo courtesy Jim Ciaciuch
The benefits of work
Tracy Taylor’s daughter, Melyssa, also works at Couple of Socks. The job has given Melyssa “the ability to feel a sense of self-satisfaction, self-pride.”
Taylor added that it’s important that Melyssa, Molly and their colleagues have jobs “in the public eye.”
When she was young, Taylor said, many people never noticed adults with special needs.
“They were hidden away. To have this be fully front and center, at a regular mall with lots of regular folks interacting with people who are not quite the same, has been I think remarkable,” she said.
Taylor is doing her part. She works for Elevation Home Designs of Puyallup and with support from her boss, Jared Baehmer, she is handling permitting for Ciaciuch. “That’s how much I believe in what he’s doing,” she said.
A Couple of parallels
Melyssa hopes to work at Couple of Scoops in addition to Couple of Socks, though her family lives in Puyallup. That’s possible because Pierce Transit operates a shuttle system for people whose disabilities make them unable to use routed service.
Ciaciuch said he zeroed in on the Olympic Village location for Scoops and Tacoma Mall for Socks in part because they are easily accessible for both Paratransit and routed bus service users.
Couple of Scoops will follow Couple of Socks’ template in other ways, too. Ciaciuch said he will pay above minimum wage, for instance. And he doesn’t view either store as a money-maker. He supports his family with other entrepreneurial ventures, including self-storage businesses. (Another Ciaciuch daughter, Josie, operates Precious Collective Boutique in Uptown.)
The Couple of stores are about jobs for people like Molly. But the benefits extend beyond that, Ciaciuch said.
“What I thought I was getting was a job for my daughter and creating a business for her to work at,” he said. “What it turned into was a blessing, not just for the people who work there but the people who come in.”
“I tell them … We’ve got some pretty incredible people in here.”
Jim Ciaciuch, left, and employees of Couple of Socks in Tacoma. Photo courtesy of Jim Ciaciuch
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