New Restaurants on Strasburg PA Main Street: An Evening Shift
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
Three businesses have recently opened or been proposed within a few doors of Strasburg's Center Square. None of them is a daytime operation. Skip's Chicken opens at 4 p.m. Shady Rooster Craft Cidery wants to pour cider. Helm Distilling Co. wants to make spirits on site and host live music. Each one is aimed at the hours after the square's best-known tenant, an ice cream counter, has done most of its business.
That's a real change for the blocks right off the square. For about four decades the anchor on the corner has been the Strasburg Creamery, a summer ice cream stop that LNP called the borough's "40-year summertime tradition of ice cream on the square." The newer tenants are planning around a different clock, and the paperwork they've filed with the borough shows it.
Skip's Chicken opened its brick-and-mortar restaurant at 11 W. Main St. on Aug. 6, 2026, ABC27 reported. It's in the buildings behind the Creamery that used to hold a winery and a bakery. According to LNP, one side handles takeout, and the brick building that once housed Allegro Winery is now a café with seats for about 30. A patio shared with Strasburg Creamery adds more seating.
The shared patio is what changes the corner. An outdoor space that used to fill with ice cream cones now has a dinner menu next to it, with fried and grilled chicken sandwiches, fries, salads and wings.
The hours tell the same story. When it opened, LNP listed Skip's at 4 to 9 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. ABC27's Aug. 20 report gave a wider schedule, 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 4 to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and said the owners hope to add lunch eventually. Those are the most recent hours we could find. Check before you go, since they may have changed.
Daniel "Skip" Stoltzfus, his wife Kathryn and their friend Marcus Stoltzfus started Skip's as a food truck in 2021. A Wrightstown location came before Strasburg.
All of this goes back to the Creamery complex changing hands. Three local couples, Jeremy and Jenna Peifer, Tyler and Amber Martin, and Brian and Lindsey Funk, bought it. LNP photographed them there as the new co-owners on June 4, 2025. LNP reported that the $1.4 million sale covered the corner building with the ice cream shop, store and inn, plus the neighboring properties that had held a winery and a bakery. The renovated Strasburg General Store at 1 W. Main St. had its grand opening on May 23 this year. Skip's moving into the old winery and bakery space is the newest piece of that rebuild, and the first one designed around dinner.
On the other two corners near the square, the evening plans are still on paper. Both went before the Strasburg Borough Zoning Hearing Board at the same session, on Aug. 19, 2026, at the borough office at 145 Precision Ave.
15 W. Main St., Shady Rooster Craft Cidery. Shady Rooster, LLC, which the notice lists as the property owner, asked for a special exception to run a brewpub/cidery in the building next to the Creamery. Smokestack BBQ used to be there. LNP reported that the taproom would serve hard apple cider along with peach, pear and berry ciders, some locally made beers and food. The cider would be made elsewhere. The plan calls for about 20 seats in the first-floor dining room, room for 30 upstairs and a few outdoor tables. Owners Bailey Groff and Jonathan Brenneman have made cider commercially for about two years. Right now they sell it from a stand at Cherry Crest Adventure Farm, east of town.
8-10 E. Main St., Helm Distilling Co. LNP reported that Cody and Kayla Helm of Conestoga Township hope to open a locally owned distillery there this fall, once the required approvals come through. They would take over the space Tavern by Spring House Brewing Co. has used since 2021. The tavern's lease was set to end at the end of September.
The Helm application asks for more than a change of tenant. According to the borough's hearing notice, it requested:
"a variance to the extent required from the definition of a tavern in Section 112. Of the Zoning Ordinance to allow spirits to be produced on-site and to allow unamplified live entertainment"
If the board instead treats the use as a brewpub, the application asks for a variance so the business could earn less than 50% of its annual gross revenue from food sales. Put simply, this would be a drinks-and-music room that serves food, which is a different kind of place from a restaurant that also has a bar.
The borough doesn't post Zoning Hearing Board decisions online. They're kept at the borough office for public inspection. We couldn't confirm the outcome of either application, and neither business has announced an opening date we could verify. There has been one visible step at 8 East Main. At its Sept. 8 meeting, Borough Council approved a Historical Architectural Review Board certificate of appropriateness for barn siding and a sign there.
The clearest sign of how many people the East Main plan expects is in its parking request. The application asks for variances to serve the property with seven on-site off-street spaces plus thirty-three leased spaces in nearby shared lots. It also asks to allow one undersized loading space. That works out to 40 spaces planned for a single storefront on East Main, and more than four out of five of them would be off the property. Both buildings sit in the borough's C-1 Commercial Zone.
The square's traffic setup is changing at the same moment. At the same Sept. 8 meeting, Council approved Telco Group's cost estimate to furnish and install video detection on all four approaches to the Center Square traffic signal.
Some of this evening activity has been happening on the calendar since spring. The Strasburg Heritage Society lists May 15, 2026 as the first "3rd in Strasburg," a monthly program where local businesses and civic groups hold special events and promotions on the third Friday. The Society's part is a Story Bench, set up in a different spot each month, with local-history stories for all ages. The first one was outside the Creamery and General Store, with coloring pages for kids.
The listed hours are 4 to 8 p.m., the same window when Skip's is open. The Oct. 16 Story Bench will feature Strasburg ghost stories. The Society hasn't yet posted where it will be. The program is still young. We couldn't find a single organizer or a full list of participating businesses, so it's best to think of 3rd in Strasburg as an evening the town is still building.
The rest of the fall calendar keeps bringing people back to the same few blocks:
On parade night, the route goes past the patio Skip's shares with the Creamery and on past both buildings waiting on zoning decisions.
If you own a home a short walk from Center Square and want to know how a busier Main Street fits into what your home is worth, The Wissler Team is following these openings as they happen. Start with a Free Home Valuation, and we'll walk you through what we're seeing on your street.
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