2026 has brought an influx of new businesses to Oberlin. With Sunset Asian Cuisine, Bailey’s Farm Market, Magick Moons, Uptown Pizza, and ThiNi Thai all opening or reopening in the last two months, spaces on Main Street have filled up. Crush Lovable Ice Cream Sandwiches plans to open at 61 S. Main St. in late May. 

“Things are filling. And that’s what we want,” Abbie Fox, executive director of Oberlin Business Partnership, said. “We want a full downtown. We want more places for college kids to go and hang out and purchase things.”

Matthew Uhl, a professional baker from Wellington, is opening Crush, Lovable Ice Cream Sandwiches in a space near the Oberlin Public Library in late May. He first opened Crush as a food truck in 2024. 

“I’ve run a mobile operation, and we’ve done a lot here in Oberlin,” Uhl said. “We do all the events, the music at the squares, the art festival, soccer tournaments. It was actually [because of] outreach from the community saying, ‘You guys ought to open up a place, there’s no ice cream shop in Oberlin,’ that we finally decided maybe we should open a place … Oberlin resonates with us, and we feel very welcomed by the community.” 

Using eggs from his own chickens, local Amish butter, and honey from a friend’s apiary, Uhl bakes gourmet cookies that he fills with Toft’s ice cream. He is planning on expanding Crush’s offerings to include brownies, cinnamon rolls, and baklava. Crush will also have a small beverage selection. 

Among other restaurants, ThiNi Thai, owned by brothers Matt and Jason Adelman of The Feve, specializes in Northern Thai cuisine by chef Aon Krittathiranon. After opening in January 2020, it temporarily closed last August to accommodate moving from their space at 18 Carpenter Court to their current location at 19 S. Main St. Beloved by college and community alike, ThiNi Thai’s re-opening on Friday, April 3, was met with fanfare. 

“[We were] fully booked for the whole weekend,” Matt Adelman said. “We’ve been taking reservations so that we can throttle the crowd. We want to make sure that waits aren’t too long and it’s…not out of control…I think we’re sold out this weekend as well, but we do take walk-ins, so you can walk and sit at the bar.” 

Adelman attributes ThiNi Thai’s success to Krittathiranon, whom the brothers met in Thailand in 2015, an encounter he calls “basically serendipity.” A new location is not the only change for the restaurant. 

“The environment’s different,” Adelman said. “The presentation is different. We’re going to be changing our menu every month, so that’s gonna be very different from what it used to be. … Aon is really excited for a partially tapas-style menu [alongside] main dishes. The tapas stuff is great because it gives you an opportunity to try several different flavors. It’s [also] a very common Thai way to eat, you have several things that everybody shares.”

While new businesses arrive, others have left, such as Doobie’s Smoke Shop and Bingo Chinese Restaurant, which closed in December. Oberlin’s small downtown is constantly changing, but Fox theorizes there is a pattern. 

“We see this fluctuation in spaces in Oberlin every couple of years; people are in and out. I think that we had an ‘out’ year last year, between 2024 and 2025, where there were five or six empty storefronts. They have all been filled now,” she said. 

In a town as small as Oberlin, Fox’s priority is making sure that all consumer niches are filled. 

“We really, really, really want more shops,” Fox said. “Our restaurant scene is the bomb for how small Oberlin is … But we need clothing … I think if there was more retail here, we’d get more tourism. Coming into 2026, my big goal for OBP is tourism. We need to get more footprints here. We need to be seen as more than just a college town.” 

More businesses are a win-win for everyone and essential to maintaining a thriving local economy. 

“I’m a firm believer that the more choices you have, the better everybody will do,” Adelman said. “We have more great restaurants in town, so we will do better. … If somebody from a surrounding community wants to go out to dinner, they’re not going to say, ‘Oh, let’s go to the Feve’ anymore. They’re going to say, ‘Let’s go to Oberlin.’”