A Christmas Workshop In Manayunk? Who Knew

For most of the year, the warehouse at the end of a dead-end street in Manayunk is nearly vacant. But just like the secret shop in the North Pole, it transforms the eight weeks before Christmas.

Pickers, packers and shippers work feverishly boxing chocolate pretzels, bagging jelly beans and organizing Tasty Kakes to be shipped across the country.

"We send tons, literally tons, of chocolate pretzels," Michael Holahan, owner of the Pennsylvania General Store said in his warehouse in the 200 block of Krams Avenue.

This year Holahan said he will send upwards of 10,000 packages during the  Christmas season, but the Philadelphia native said the operation started on a much smaller scale.

He opened a boxed lunch business in the Reading Terminal in 1987.

"I was just an unhappy employee who had nothing to lose," he said. "In the beginning we thought it was great when we had 40 lunches."

Holahan sold the boxed lunch business about a decade later and began focusing on gift baskets in his Reading Terminal shop. In 2006 he moved his operation into its current location to handle the holiday rush but he still has a shop at the downtown market.

"I'll say this season is hectic," he said. "It's a happy hectic though."

Although there is a small store in the front of the warehouse, Holahan said he doesn't see much foot traffic.

"Most people don't even know we're here," he said.

Although it's been a crazy couple of months, the owner said he wouldn't change a thing.

"I hope we can just keep doing what we're doing," he said. "People really think of this place as their secret shop."