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chased by the same types of customers. Consumer confusion, MirrorLite claims, is inevitable.

Recently, for example, a customer of a MirrorLite dealer who was paying for services mistakenly delivered the check to LiteMirror. Then LiteMirror allegedly cashed the check, “prof iting off of the consumer confusion created by its own infringement.”

MirrorLite is accusing its purported doppelgänger of trademark infringement, false advertising, and unfair competition.

It is asking the court to order LiteMirror to stop using its trademark or any deceptively similar combination of words; turn over materials that use the trademark; account for its prof its and pay unspecif ied damages, including treble damages for willful infringement.

“LiteMirror denies the allegations of the complaint and looks forward to defending itself in court,” company president Rick Powers said in an email.

MirrorLite is represented by Ossining attorneys Jeffrey A. Lindenbaum and Jess M. Collen. LiteMirror is represented by White Plains attorneys Peter Sloane and Cameron Reuber.

“The Hillview Reservoir facilities control the incoming flows from the upstate water supply reservoirs and manage water pressure entering the water distribution system,” Valade said. “The chemical systems at Hillview Reservoir provide the last point of chemical treatment for a majority of the water supply before water enters New York City’s drinking water distribution system.”

The current Hillview Reservoir Improvements Project includes two major components: construction of new chemical addition facilities and Hillview Reservoir Campus upgrades; flow-control improvements and additional facility upgrades.

The f irst component includes construction of two new chemical addition facilities, the New North Facility and New South Facility, which would increase on-site chemical storage capacity. Upgrades to the existing north and south facilities include installing two new electrical service feeds and associated distribution equipment, new flow measurement systems, a new Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, and upgrading the existing North Entrance and adding a new police booth.

The second component would see the installation of new chemical feeding and monitoring systems along with additional upgrades to existing systems. New access roadways would be constructed. Once new chemical facilities were operational demolition of older facilities would take place.

In March, the Yonkers Zoning Board of Appeals approved variances that were needed for the project that dealt with building heights and the number of required parking spaces. NYCDEP said it did not need all of the 147 parking spaces that would be required based on square footage to be built and did not anticipate that more than the current 56 workers would be accessing the site. It said it only needed 77 parking spaces and that 17 of them would be equipped with electric vehicle charging stations. NYCDEP also was asking for a variance so that if it became necessary construction work could take place outside of the normal hours permitted by Yonkers.

NYCDEP now is seeking site plan approval from the Yonkers Planning Board.

NYCDEP pointed out that while it has acted as lead agency for the environmental review of the project it also has reached out to the residents of the surrounding community. The agency said there were town hall meetings hosted by Yonkers Councilman John Rubbo and that it met with the Hyatt Association and other community groups in the neighborhoods near the reservoir. NYCDEP issued a negative declaration of environmental impact for the project.

“The New York City water system is based on a 2,000-square-mile watershed the size of the state of Delaware. The vast majority of water that serves Yonkers, New York City, almost all of Westchester, many communities in the four counties just north of here, all comes from the Catskills,” John Milgrim, director of outreach for the NYCDEP water supply system said. “All of that water from the main water supplies ultimately ends up in Hillview.”

Milgrim described Hillview as a very critical piece of infrastructure.

“It’s what we call a balancing reservoir,” Milgrim said. “It’s used to create the pressure in the municipal systems. It’s always at the same level, within inches. It’s monitored carefully 24/7. There’s a long, good safety record at the facility.”

Milgrim described the Hillview Reservoir as being in a unique situation since it is closely surrounded by residential and business areas whereas most of the other NYCDEP water facilities are in rural locations.

“We worked with the community intensively -- listened to their concerns. We believe that we have addressed the vast majority of their concerns in a positive way with providing green space they can use throughout, continue to allow them to use space that is New York City property that abuts to the backyards, to ensure that have somebody that they can reach out to who is in a decision making capacity, who they can work with and reach pretty much any day of the week.”

NYCDEP anticipates that there would be about 450 construction jobs created by the current project.

Connecticut. Has this been a lucrative market for your company?

As a matter of fact, it’s been a very successful market for us. We’ve been in Connecticut for some time – I believe we opened up in Stamford in 2004 – and we’ve been growing consistently. The average volume for our units – in Connecticut, there are eight currently – is generally higher than our average unit volume. There’s obviously a lot of a lot of af f inity for the brand and we want to continue to sort of pursue growth, within Fair f ield County in particular.

I used to live down the street from a Robeks and would see it every day. But I don’t recall seeing very much in the way of either TV advertising or social media advertising for Robex. How you get the word out regarding your Connecticut stores.

Well, we’re a smaller brand in terms of system size – we’re just under 100 units, but we’ll surpass that sometime in this quarter. So, by virtue of that, we need to rely more on marketing engagement with our franchisees in terms of local schools and other sorts of key demographics. We do some things locally around social media and, in some cases, radio – it depends on the cost and availability of a particular media.

What is the state of your franchise market? Are you getting a lot of inquiries, not only from Fair f ield County but from around the country for Robeks?

We are, and that segment has really grown in the last 24 months. I think part of that is a byproduct of Covid. We had a tremendous sales increase to 2021 versus 2020, and then another nice year in 2022. Some of it was fundamental elements that we changed or adapted within the business itself, but I think the other piece of it, frankly, was sort of a post-Covid halo around health and wellness.

I think it will continue to be strong. It’s a segment that has been around for many, many years – we started in southern California back in 1996. We’re on a steady growth and there is a lot of awareness and interest in our type of a product.

How do you review the franchise applications and determine who gets the nod and who may not be the best f it?

As you might imagine, there is both a subjective and objective kind of look. One of the key objective criteria is a matter of f inances – obviously, for someone to be able to build a restaurant there’s a certain f inancial requirement. We’re looking at $300,000 in terms of minimum net worth and $100,000 in liquidity – that typically is the base level.

But beyond that, we engage with a candidate and begin our process to understand if they are good communicators, organized and motivated. We like to see folks that are community minded – it goes to my point earlier around being focused on local restaurant marketing, and that’s a key piece of the puzzle for us.

We are also looking at their involvement in managing young people, because in many cases that is the employee base – for some young folks, it is their f irst job.

What about the Robeks menu selection? How frequently does that get updated? And how many new flavors new foods or drinks are you testing at any given time?

I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of movement as it relates to the menu. We have a very stable juice and smoothie lineup that’s been very successful. We will do limited time offers and if it adds some excitement and some energ y within the brand, we might be adding it as a menu item.

In 2021, we launched a line of premium toast starting with an avocado toast, and it’s been a tremendous product for us. We added three new premium toasts to that line as a limited time offer, and as we see how those perform as an extension of original avocado toast products we may well retain one or all those three new products.

What about across the state line?

Robeks has a single Hudson Valley store in Carmel – are you planning to do any additional stores in that market?

We’re vetting potential candidates. With the person that opened in Carmel – I guess it was last year – we are talking with him as well about the potential of extending going from one to two additional locations. We see a lot of similarity in those markets, how they look from a demographic standpoint and how we think they perform.

We still have some opportunity in Connecticut – we have two locations slated to open this year, in Bristol and Milford. And I would say Bridgeport is a market that makes a lot of sense. We’re excited about Connecticut.