Two new dessert cafés bring cold-brewed teas, crepe cakes, and taro buns to Ardmore
HalfAWhile, a tea and cake shop, and Mango Mango, a mango-inspired dessert chain, recently opened on one of the Main Line's busiest commercial strips.
Ardmore just got two new dessert cafés.
HalfAWhile, a tea and cake shop, and Mango Mango, a mango-inspired dessert chain, recently opened their doors in downtown Ardmore, bringing an abundance of sweet treats to the growing portfolio of new restaurants and businesses in the Main Line community.
Located at 22 W Lancaster Ave. in the former Kung Fu Tea storefront, HalfAWhile is a tea and dessert shop specializing in high-quality cold-brewed teas and pastries and cakes with Asian influences.
Husband and wife owners Leo Wei and Haley He acquired the storefront from Kung Fu Tea after years of dreaming about opening their own business.
At HalfAWhile, the duo is serving a range of treats, including handmade crepe and tiramisu cakes; cold-brewed leaf teas; and buns filled with taro, minced pork, and sausage. HalfAWhile’s teas come in flavors from passion fruit to brown sugar, and can include many of the boba accoutrements customers at Kung Fu Tea came to love.
The name HalfAWhile is a mashup of two core tenants of the café.
“Half” symbolizes Wei and He’s goal to use around half of the amount of sugar traditionally found in items like bubble tea and crepe cake.
“That is our intention, to be more healthy,” Wei said.
“While” signifies their desire for patrons to feel comfortable in the shop and stay a while, lounging on the sofa or posting up at one of the tables. It’s a “really cozy place,” Wei said.
HalfAWhile will be in their “soft opening” phase through the end of August or the beginning of September, as Wei and He pin down inventory needs, train staff, and get their online apparatus up and running. The store is currently open every day from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Around the corner, Mango Mango has moved into 38 Greenfield Ave., the former home of electronic store World Wide Stereo.
Mango Mango is a growing chain of Asian-inspired dessert restaurants, where the sweet, sticky stone fruit is the menu’s “muse.”
The first Mango Mango opened in New York City’s Chinatown in 2013, and the dessert chain has since opened more than three dozen franchises across the U.S., from Hawaii to New Jersey. Ardmore is Mango Mango’s sixth Philly-area location after Chinatown, University City, Oxford Circle, Berwyn, and Cherry Hill.
Mango Mango’s menu is extensive, ranging from pillowy crepe cakes to ice cream sundaes and fruit teas. Naturally, the café’s desserts and teas lean heavily on mango — one can order a mango smoothie, mango crepe cake, layered mango snowcloud with fresh mango chunks and popping bubbles, and hot mango green tea — though other flavors are available, too.
Mango Mango’s Ardmore outpost is hosting its grand opening today. The café is open from noon to 10 p.m. seven days a week, and the shop will be running deals and promotions through its first four weeks of service.
The two dessert cafés join an expanding list of new businesses in Ardmore, both in the Main Line community’s downtown corridor and in Suburban Square, the popular Kimco Realty-owned outdoor shopping center.
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