Walk down Main Street in Lititz this fall and count the storefronts that look different than they did two years ago. A newspaper building now sells climbing shoes. A shuttered brewpub now pours wine by the glass. A restaurant that's changed its name twice now serves Mediterranean small plates. A century-old chocolate factory now has a steakhouse certified to serve Kobe beef. The stories vary. Some are longtime Lititz businesses moving into larger spaces; others are new concepts taking shape at familiar downtown addresses.
Those different paths matter more than they might seem to. Together, they show how this downtown keeps its shape even as its buildings keep changing hands.
The Newspaper Building Sells Hiking Boots Now
For most of the last century, 22 E. Main St. printed the news. LancasterOnline reported that the building was the original home of the Lititz Record Express, the weekly paper that told the town's own stories until it moved its offices to Ephrata in 2006 to share space with the Ephrata Review. After the presses left, the space became Zum Anker Alley Shoppes, run for years by Bud and Alice, whose shop dog Totter was as much a fixture as the merchandise.
Bud and Alice are retiring. In their place is Lititz Outsider, a 4,200-square-foot outdoor gear store spread over two floors; LancasterOnline reported on its opening under Mark and Rebecca Branle. The Branles weren't arriving from outside the local business scene. They'd already spent ten years running Lititz Bikeworks out of Rock Lititz before folding that shop into the new downtown location and expanding it to include hiking boots, climbing shoes, camping gear and active apparel alongside the bikes. Find the entrance by heading toward the Bulls Head Public House and following the sidewalk just west of it, or come in off Juniper Lane, past Collusion Tap Works and the Lititz Shirt Factory.
The address has shifted from telling Lititz’s stories to outfitting people heading outdoors.
A Brewpub Building Becomes a Wine Bar
LancasterOnline reported that 27-31 E. Main St. has cycled through concepts before landing on this one. It was JoBoys Brewpub, then Tied House, which closed in 2024. Now it's Beccafico, a Southern Italian restaurant serving pasta, seafood and pastries, with a wine bar in the lower level that seats about 50.
The chef behind it, Sara Elia, isn't new to Lititz's food scene either. She already runs the catering company Serafina's by Chef Sara and organizes the L'Italia Festival, which held its third annual event in 2024 in Lititz Springs Park. She secured her own restaurant liquor license and is leasing and operating the space herself, with a silent financial partner backing the build-out but no outside operator running the kitchen.
Like the Branles, Elia had already made herself known around town before she signed a Main Street lease. The restaurant is new. Her relationship with Lititz is not.
Your Place, Then Scooters, Now a Greek Taverna
Not every building on this stretch has one clean origin story. One space has cycled through more names than most: it was Your Place, then Scooters, and it's now Skorpios Mediterranean Taverna & Lounge, a family-owned restaurant built around Greek heritage, handcrafted cocktails and a menu drawn from the Mediterranean coast.
Skorpios doesn't share the same hyperlocal founder story as Lititz Outsider or Beccafico. What it shares is timing. It landed in the same recent wave of turnover as the others, inside a building that had already proven, through several previous tenants, that it could support a full-service restaurant on that stretch of Main Street.
The Chocolate Factory's Steakhouse
The most dramatic transformation on this list isn't a storefront swap. It's a full reinvention of a factory. Wilbur Chocolate made candy at 48 N. Broad St. for 113 years before Cargill, which had owned the brand since 1992, ended production in 2016 and laid off about 130 workers. Oak Tree Development spent the years after buying the site converting the 130,000-square-foot factory building, and eventually the wider property around it, into The Wilbur, a mixed-use project that includes a 74-room boutique hotel under Hilton's Tapestry Collection, 26 condominiums, a parking garage and ground-floor restaurant space overlooking Lititz Springs Park.
Oak Tree president Mike O'Brien told LancasterOnline when the hotel opened in 2019:
"I don't think this hotel is going to disappoint anyone who stays here."
The building still carries the shell of its industrial life: LancasterOnline described exposed century-old brick and beams running through the hotel, old production equipment in the courtyard, and archival photos rotating across a lobby wall. What was originally addressed as 48 N. Broad St. now houses the restaurant space at 52 N. Broad St, home to KōLE Chophouse, a steakhouse built around a Josper grill fueled by wood-fired charcoal. The name comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch word for coal, a nod to how every cut gets cooked over live fire with nothing more than salt and pepper. KōLE sources beef from producers in the United States, Australia and Japan and is certified to serve Kobe beef, a distinction only a handful of restaurants in Pennsylvania hold.
A factory that once employed 130 people molding Wilbur Buds now serves some of the most expensive beef available in the state, a few doors from where the chocolate used to ship out.
Old Spaces, New Directions
Line up all four and the stories are more varied: some are expansions by people already working in Lititz, while others bring new concepts to familiar downtown spaces:
- 22 E. Main St., Rear: Lititz Record Express, then Zum Anker Alley Shoppes, now Lititz Outsider, opened by Mark and Rebecca Branle after ten years running Lititz Bikeworks at Rock Lititz
- 27-31 E. Main St.: JoBoys Brewpub, then Tied House, now Beccafico, opened by chef Sara Elia of Serafina's by Chef Sara and the L'Italia Festival
- A Main Street storefront: Your Place, then Scooters, now Skorpios Mediterranean Taverna & Lounge, family-owned and built around Greek heritage
- 48-52 N. Broad St.: Wilbur Chocolate Factory, now The Wilbur, a Tapestry Collection hotel by Hilton, with KōLE Chophouse on the ground floor
Every one of these swaps also moved toward something narrower and pricier than what came before it in the same space. A retirement gift shop became a two-floor technical gear store carrying climbing shoes and tents that weren't previously available downtown. A brewpub became a chef-owned restaurant with a dedicated wine bar. A casual bar became a themed taverna built around an imported dining concept. A chocolate factory became a boutique hotel anchored by one of the only Kobe-certified kitchens in the state.
Together, these changes show several ways familiar downtown spaces can take on new uses: local business expansions, new restaurant concepts, and a mixed-use factory redevelopment.
If you've been meaning to check out the new place in the old newspaper building, or you're curious what's cooking behind the Tied House's old doors, that's worth a walk down Main Street this weekend. James Dunn Team pays as much attention to what's changing in Lititz as we do to what's for sale in it. Deal Gets Dunn.
