A bittersweet goodbye: A downtown Belleville business announces permanent closure
One of the owners of a downtown Belleville business has officially announced that his shop will not reopen.
In an emotional Facebook live video on Wednesday, Aug. 23, Crafty Sugar Co. co-owner Mike Thouvenot said that after a fire in the shop’s building on East Main Street earlier this year, the business will not reopen.
Co-owner Scott Schmelzel, who also owns Big Daddy’s 618, said in a phone interview that the candy shop did pretty good business.
He said they took a big hit during COVID, but continued plodding along.
But the May 29 fire in the apartment above the shop changed everything.
The candy shop worked and did well – particularly during downtown Belleville’s festivals and events – just not well enough to make a full recovery, according to Schmelzel.
In Thouvenot’s 15-minute video, he started with a recap of the fire, which caused extensive smoke and water damage to the shop.
“The main room, center of the room, was like a waterfall … it was literally about 8 to 10 inches wide of water pouring down into the center of the room and the rest of the room was dripping,” he said.
He said the smoke was so thick that you couldn’t see the candy in the front windows and that once inside you couldn’t see halfway through the space.
The damage resulted in the loss of most of the inventory, and the store had to be gutted and cleaned.
Lists of incurred losses were submitted as the wait for word from the insurance company grew longer.
Thouvenot needed a timeline and an idea of how much money the insurance would pay out so plans could be made to rebuild.
Then things became more complicated.
After the smoke cleared
Thouvenot said the landlord plans to sell the building.
He said, “I didn’t really wanna take the chance of moving into the building and then waiting a couple more months to get into the building and get reopened here just to not know how long we were going to be in this building.”
The uncertainty was too big, so Thouvenot looked at other potential sites for the shop in downtown Belleville and surrounding areas.
However, he wasn’t able to find a satisfactory or an affordable place.
“With the losses that we took … and what the numbers … we’re gettin’ from insurance, we can’t afford to do another buildout in a new building,” he said in the video. “We can’t afford to double our rent. And I definitely don’t want to be in a place where we’re, like, on the side of a highway somewhere. We would like to be in a downtown area.”
Thouvenot said he couldn’t figure out a way to do it without doubling his investment in the shop or going to a smaller scale.
Then he gave the news.
“Crafty Sugar Company will not be reopening.”
For the kids
By that point in the video, Thouvenot was visibly emotional and thanked his customers and Belleville and surrounding cities.
He said, “The kids are the reason why we’re here … why we’re still here, or why we were here.”
Even after the complications from COVID and neighboring businesses closing, “The kids are the reason why I kept it going. I didn’t want to disappoint the kids.”
“I could be having the worst day ever,” he continued. “And one little guy, one little girl walks in, smiles, I see the joy on their face, and I couldn’t close the store.”
The long hours made it difficult for Thouvenot to have a life outside of the shop.
Over the last few years he tried to get the store to a point where he could make a small income and even sell the shop.
“There’s a proud feeling when people walk in the door and you see the joy that they got from something that I created,” he said.
Thouvenot did say there may be a final hurrah for Crafty Sugar Co.
If he can work it out, he might have a tent at Pridefest on Saturday, Sept. 30, to sell the remaining stock of root beer, pints of ice cream and a shipment of candy that arrived after the fire.
Keep an eye on the Crafty Sugar Co. Facebook page for any updates.
“Opening a business in this day and age is difficult,” and losing the shop is certainly not good for downtown, said Schmelzel.
“I hate to see it for Mike. I hate to see it for downtown,” he said.
About Crafty Sugar Co.
Crafty Sugar Co. opened in May 2018 at 104 E. Main St. in Belleville under the co-ownership of Thouvenot and Schmelzel.
And it’s not the first sweets shop to operate at that location.
In the late 1890s, the Goelitz family ran a confectionery at the Main Street site, historian Bob Brunkow of the Belleville Historical Society told the BND in 2018.
The family had various locations in Belleville starting in 1869 and moved the company to Cincinnati around 1900.
Brunkow said that the East Main Street shop was the family’s last in Belleville.
The shop was also a confectionery operated by Victor Lavaux, who sold “choice fruits, nuts, fancy candies, and the freshest oysters,” according to a Jan. 29, 1901, advertisement in The Daily News-Democrat.
It was also the location of Dreamy Creamy Scoops, an ice cream shop that opened in May 2008 and closed in February 2013.
