In rainy Ocean City, a crop of new businesses was getting ready for the big dance

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Sharlyce Peterson and her three adult daughters had their eyes on the corner shop at Sixth and Asbury Avenue, but the landlord was skeptical.

Although their Southern-inspired clothing shop, Petes Mercantile, had taken off online, Peterson said, the landlord worried that they had no “brick and mortar” experience.

But the Peterson women managed to win him over, and so fast-forward to this rainy Saturday before Memorial Day Weekend, and Sharlyce, 58, is working her usual weekend shift at what is becoming a popular clothing boutique along Ocean City’s eclectic downtown business district.

“For us it was happenstance,” she said. “We’re grateful. Who gets to play with their adult children, to bicker with them? It’s been a strange blessing.”

Petes Mercantile, with its cozy selection of flowing dresses and comfy, stylish tops, and a price point topping out at $100, is one of the new businesses in Ocean City this year testing their fate blocks from the boardwalk in the fickle but booming Jersey Shore economic climate.

They include some familiar Philly names such as Green Eggs Cafe, relocating to the old Chatterbox at Ninth and Central, and Groovy Smoovies, the smoothie shop opening next weekend at 611 E. Eighth St. by former Eagles offensive lineman Shawn Andrews and business partner Antonne Jones.

Some, such as the cheekily branded Ocean City merchandise store Dry Island, at 10th and Asbury, have newly expanded into bigger footprints.

Husband and wife team Juan and Yolanda Sanchez, of La Autentica, moved from their longtime grocery on Eighth Street in the middle of last summer to expand into a full-service restaurant at 1018 Asbury Ave. They’re gearing up for a busy summer of Birria tacos.

For Lisa Nugent, who opened Lisa’s Sweet Treats at 1046 Asbury this year, it’s a roll of the dice she’s been wanting to take for decades.

For Heather Neville of soon-to-open Agape, a gourmet food shop at 856 Asbury, it’s an extension of a zany but driven entrepreneurial spirit she brought to her first Ocean City shop, Goodies Gone Wild, a hot sauce and exotic meat shop (heat, meats and sweets) that sounds maybe just a little ridiculous for the Ocean City Boardwalk, but did not lack for business. (Never mind the time she tried to sell people Zebra meat.)

Although weather predictions are a bit iffy, due to El Niño, economic analysts are once again bullish on the Jersey Shore this summer, after several banner seasons.

At Petes Mercantile, both predictions were in play as business was steady Saturday morning (rain is rarely bad for downtown businesses), and Peterson said last month was their best month so far. A nurse who runs Cape May Urgent Care, she is optimistic about the family’s first summer on Asbury Avenue.

“Ocean City has been very good to us,” she said. Her daughter Sarah lives in Egg Harbor Township; Chelsea, 32, and Maddie, 25, focus on website and inventory and will be flying in from Florida to help out this summer. “We’re all part-owners,” she said.

Heather Neville’s Agape gourmet store isn’t quite open, but that didn’t stop people from popping into the store to look around as Neville unpacked and schemed out exactly what will go where.

She said she expects the store’s identity to evolve as time goes on, but she’s modeling after the small corner groceries from her New York childhood, where people knew you and would cover you if you were a few dollars short.

She’s hoping to be the charcuterie board supplier for Ocean City’s (allegedly) wineless masses.

“I’m very anti-big business,” said Neville, 46. “Everything will be locally sourced. I don’t sell online.”

She says she’s not stressed by the coming deluge of people. She first came to Ocean City because her main business was selling Christmas trees in New York City, and she needed something for her off-season. People gave her a bit of a side-eye when she described Goodies Gone Wild, hot sauce and exotic meats, but she proved the skeptics wrong.

She wants people to skip the Acme and stock up at Agape, the Greek word for a transcendent love. “We’ll keep your tummy happy,” she said, with pasta salads, pickles, spreads, meats, and snacks. She’s going with the flow.

“What this will be the day it opened compared to five years from now, who knows?” Neville said. “The challenge is figuring out the rhyme or reason of the store.”

At Lisa’s Sweet Treats, Lisa Nugent says a two-year serious illness gave her the motivation to open the bakery she’d always dreamed of. She previously worked at Ward’s Pastry, which closed last summer after 98 years to the despair of its loyal following, and at Stockton University.

Resting her arms on the bakery case Saturday, Nugent said she is just happy to be there to give her dreams a real-life testing. If it works, great. If not, that’s OK, too.

(A steady stream of pre-Memorial Day customers buying key lime pie-lettes, cupcakes, doughnuts and Danishes would seem to point to a good outcome.)

“I wanted to do what I wanted to do as far as taking risks and making me happy,” she said. “This stuff makes me happy.”

At La Autentica, Yolanda Sanchez was stocking shelves before a lunch rush would send her to the kitchen. Husband Juan was at the front counter.

They opened the restaurant midsummer, cooking up batches of “grandma’s secret sauce,” and say their birria tacos have been getting raves, and not just for Ocean City, which, it should be noted, is becoming its own little mecca for Mexican food.

“We’re feeling good about it,” he said. “A lot of people are giving us good reviews.”

The biggest concern for merchants, Sanchez said, is that the buildings they are in will be sold in the Shore’s hot real estate market.

At nearby Dry Island, owner Eric Plyler is in spacious new digs at 10th and Asbury for his cleverly branded merchandise in the family resort that still prohibits alcohol.

The approach encompasses both irony and appreciation for Ocean City’s unique identity, he said. (One shirt says: “We don’t make the rules, we just work around them.”) Manager Maddie Walker said foot traffic was brisk.

Plyler said he was able to buy a building on Asbury Avenue for less money than renting a boardwalk shop for three years (at $70,000 a summer). The business at the smaller location up the street gave him the confidence to expand.

Turnover along Asbury Avenue as longtime shop owners retire gives a new generation their opportunity, he said.

“Some people are choosing to retire and that opens up opportunity for people to be part of a new wave,” he said.