A dessert shop opens next week on Hilton Head’s south end. Why you may recognize the name
It’s Wednesday morning on Hilton Head Island in a building that smells like fresh paint and doughnuts.
Lisa Bernstein, known to most as “Bernie,” is challenging her staff to make the perfect caramel iced coffee. The crew members giggle as they try to get the ratio of sugar-to-caramel-to-coffee-to-ice correct.
Ten feet away, a friend paints white rocking chairs her signature purple.
Things are finally coming together for The Purple Cow. But it’s not where it used to be.
Bernie’s dessert shop reopens Tuesday on the south end. It will serve coffee drinks, doughnuts, cheesecakes and “whatever I feel like making,” she says.
The signature dessert shop in Port Royal Plaza closed earlier this year, just weeks after Bernie signed a lease on what she called her “dream location,” in the old Juice and Java shop between the Cross Island Parkway and Sea Pines Circle. After months of baking custom orders and tearing her hair out during the coronavirus pandemic, Bernie said she’s ready to reopen the old shop in new digs.
“This is my dream. This is everything,” she said. “Being able to open on the south end is just so awesome.”
Purple Cow’s new location includes a retail shop where local artists have begun to showcase their handmade work, a small indoor seating space and a counter with enough glass treat holders to entice even the most disciplined avoider of all things sugar.
The shop’s outdoor patio, where Bernie will encourage people to sit so they can keep a social distance, includes lounge furniture and a purple cow-patterned wall, which Bernie hopes to make famous on Instagram. She said she will remind customers to “keep a cow’s length apart” while grabbing their sweet treats.
But The Purple Cow has changed from the establishment islanders used to know.
When the shop reopens on Tuesday, it will be open only from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., not late into the night. Bernie said she’s done working 110-hour weeks, and free evenings allow her to bake and prepare for the next day.
Another big change: The new Purple Cow doesn’t have a liquor license.
Gone are the days of homemade Ho-Ho’s and glasses of moscato, but Bernie says customers may BYOB to add to their coffee drinks for now. It helps that the shop isn’t open until midnight anymore.
The new shop may be hard to see from Palmetto Bay Road for the next month as the Purple Cow’s signage is being approved by the Town of Hilton Head Island. It’s located between the Chocolates By the Sea and Papa John’s building and the Lowcountry Backyard restaurant.
Bernie and her staff said they’re excited for the next chapter. If they can perfect that caramel iced coffee, that is.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 4:45 AM.
