Battle Lake to get new candy and ice cream parlor

Battle Lake was set to get a new candy and ice cream parlor at 21485 374th Ave., where Lesley Barry and business partner Sara Rivers were preparing Ala Mode Ice Cream Shop to open on the same schedule as the town’s flea market. Barry already owned six businesses, so the shop would add another venture to an established local portfolio rather than launch a first-time experiment.

A Minnesota business filing ties Lesley E. Barry to Good Life Services Inc., a company filed April 13, 2015 and still listed as active. Barry has also used the name The Wolf Lady and said she grew up on an Arabian horse farm in Minnesota’s rural lakes region, a background that fits the kind of niche branding and personality-driven business model she has built before.

The location gives the new shop an immediate advantage. Battle Lake’s business directory directs users to the Lakes Area Community and Commerce Directory, and that directory already shows a cluster of visitor-oriented businesses in town. By opening beside the flea market and matching its hours, Ala Mode was positioning itself to catch the shoppers, weekend visitors and lake-country traffic that already come through a familiar stop instead of asking customers to seek out a new destination from scratch.

That matters in Battle Lake, where a seasonal customer base can make a shop’s timing as important as its menu. A candy counter and ice cream case are built for warm-weather traffic, and a storefront tied to the flea market could give the business a built-in stream of walk-in customers through the summer. For Barry, the opening would become a seventh venture and raises a bigger local question: whether Battle Lake’s small-business corridor can still support another specialty shop built around destination traffic.