By HEIDI PRESCOTT
Tribune columnist

Describing Susan Petsche as "sweet" is too much of a cliché, considering she owns an old-fashioned candy shop. But she is sincere, modest, and apologetic.

The 73-year-old laments having to close the downtown Sugar & Spice store on Friday in South Bend, but retaining her airport location, special orders and corporate accounts makes the decision easier to bear.

You see, when you invest so much time and energy into a business like Petsche has, it's hard to let even a small piece of it go. She takes comfort in the fact that some customers will still call her for baby shower and wedding orders. "Hopefully we can keep a little bit of that business.



"I'm just trying to think like a consumer. Why should people spend $4 in gas money to come downtown unless it's something very special?" she asks herself.

Candy production will continue inside the pink building at 307 N. Hill St., where customers smell chocolate as soon as they open the door. "Oh, this is nothing. You should smell the place when we're making our mint meltaways," says Petsche, as she stands behind the glass candy counter.

The meltaways have remained one of her best sellers throughout the shop's 30 years, from the time Sugar & Spice opened at the former Pierre Moran Mall in Elkhart to her move to downtown South Bend in the 1990s.

Her turtles, double-dipped peanuts and yogurt pretzels also strike a chord with many a sweet-tooth who visit her small store. Its back wall is lined with boxes of just about any shape of candy mold you can imagine — cartoon characters, cars, trucks, baseball, tennis, musical instruments.

But the shelves behind the counter once lined with candies now contain some decorative items. Stuffed bears cover shelves near the door, but no one lines up for Beanie Babies these days.

For the past several months she has started scaling back on her inventory. Of course the economy has affected business, she says. The economy and competition have affected how and where people shop.

She used to be known for carrying Jelly Belly candies, for example. And old-fashioned treats like Boston baked beans and gumdrops. But the mass merchants line their walls with Jelly Belly dispensers. Any more, Christmas and Easter are her busiest times of year. Slower times of the year, she may get a dozen people in the store in a week.

And she needs to have money for retirement. While she doesn't talk

about it much with anyone, especially her children, Petsche admits some money earmarked for retirement has gone into the business she loves.

Still, retaining the location at the South Bend Regional Airport, with its built-in customer base, is important to her. And Petsche plans to send notices to corporate and other customers about the continuation of special orders.

Anyone will still be able to place a special order after the downtown storefront closes. She only asks for the order to be placed about a week before the preferred pick-up date downtown.

Petsche is considering a temporary reopening during the holiday season and again at Easter. She sells 1,000-plus eggs with such fillings as peanut butter and maple nut each year, and would like to continue the tradition for longtime customers.

The store will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The remaining candies will then be transferred to the airport store.

"My children have wanted me to do this for a couple of years," she says. "It's a lot of work. The paperwork today is absolutely overwhelming. I'm tired. But I have customers that have been so loyal it breaks my heart."