“Chocolate makes me happy.”
That’s what Mechanicsburg business owner Sam Saidi said about his recent business venture, Royal Chocolate Crepe & Waffle .
Located at 5202 Simpson Ferry Road in Lower Allen Township, Royal Chocolate is a sweets shop offering crepes, pancakes, specialty chocolates, cheesecake, and a variety of specialty coffees.
Saidi, a Yemen-born immigrant, moved to the United States in 2006 and opened his first shop in 2011, a deli located in the Bronx, New York.
“The area [at the time] was so bad,” Saidi said. “I called the cops at least one or two times a day.”
So Saidi passed the deli along to his brother, who still runs it today, as the area has improved. In 2016, he opened an organic food shop in New York, which he said didn’t do well, and later opened a deli in M