As I pulled into downtown Tuscola with my two daughters in the car, my 11-year old spotted a 5-cent soda advertisement painted along the side of Flesor’s Candy Kitchen. She yelled, “5-cent sodas?!”
I told her sodas definitely cost more the 5-cents now. She asked, “Were sodas five-cents when you were alive?” (Meaning when I was a kid.) Smiling, I replied, “No. They were 5-cents when my grandparents were alive.”
I grew up unwrapping ding dongs and Hershey bars, listening to stories of how gas used to be 25-cents a gallon, and knowing that my mother delivered food to cars while rolling around on roller skates. And while we still rode our bikes all over town, we grabbed our cokes out of machines.
The good ol’ days are often hard to find in these times. Many chocolate shops paint a fancy picture of hand-dipped chocolates through the window, but the majority of them sell factory made products in their cases.
But from the very moment you walk into Flesor’s Candy Kitchen, you know there is something different. If you are not greeted by a friendly employee making sodas for patrons, you will get a smile on your face when you round the corner to turtles, caramels and divinity.
A few weeks ago, while visiting the Tuscola Outlet Mall, I popped into Flesor’s so my friends could see the restored floors and quaint booths.
We were invited to the back candy making room where we were told the candy is cooked in a copper kettle, which distributes the heat evenly. Then two ladies, sitting across from each other, grabbed bits of truffle filling, rolled it into a ball on their apron, then dipped it in chocolate, just like their grandfather did when he opened the shop in 1901.
To me, the one not dipping the chocolate, the process was beautiful. These ladies, who have been dipping chocolate almost all their lives, even showed us how they write letters in chocolate on the tops of the candy so you know what is inside.
Tuscola residents and tourists alike walk through the doors of Flesor’s with expectations of good food: omelets, sandwiches, candies and ice cream. But what they don’t expect, what I did not expect, was an experience that runs so much deeper than eating the best root beer float I’ve ever tasted.
Flesor’s, now owned and operated by Devon and Ann Flesor, the granddaughters of a Greek immigrant, Gus Flesor, is built on the roots of family, hard work, community and nostalgia.
Gus opened Flesor’s in 1901 after he learned how to make candy alongside other Greek immigrants just trying to figure out how to make a living in America.
“My grandfather brought nothing over from Greece,” Devon said. “He knew other Greek men, and they taught each other how to make candy. There wasn’t a lot of candy making going on in Greece. They developed this here. That’s what they figured out to do here in the new country.”
A staple in downtown Tuscola, Flesor’s provided the community with the entertainment they desired, while the Flesor family members learned about hard work, sacrifice and respect. Like many mom and pop shops in the early 1900’s, Flesor’s was a family business, run by Gus, his wife, extended family and children.
A man of Greek tradition, Gus kept his recipes close, only teaching other male family members how to cook the candies. The women in the family were responsible for dipping the candies in chocolate and tending the customers in the front of the store.
Gus’ son, Paul, attended college in Eureka, where he met his wife, Betty, a women who grew up in Chicago, and spent time with socialites such as the Kraft family, Adali Stevenson, Jane Addams and Admiral Bird. The two eloped and Paul was sent off to World War II.
Once he returned, the couple came to Tuscola where Paul’s family was still running Flesor’s Candy Kitchen.
“My mother smoked cigarettes,” Devon said. “In the 1940’s women didn’t smoke. The men did, but not women. My mother came to my grandfather’s house with her cigarettes and her dresses, and there are all these Greek women in black. She was so shocked because the women did not eat dinner with the men. Women would serve the men, and then go off to eat. My mother grew up with a cook.”
The small town, family business life did not really fit Paul and Betty at the time, so they moved to Pennsylvania where Paul continued to work in the candy business.
In the mid 1960’s, when running the kitchen became too much for Gus, he asked Paul and Betty to return to Tuscola to take over the family business.
“My mother became this hard working person, and did manual things,” Devon said. “She became a really, really good candy dipper. She went from someone who didn’t know how to cook because she wasn’t allowed to, to somebody who could dip 100 pounds of candy a day.”
And so Paul and Betty followed suit. Paul cooked the candy. Betty dipped the candy. And just as Paul grew up in the store, so did all three of his children while their grandfather watched over.
Devon said it was here that she learned the lessons she’s trying to teach her children as they work in the kitchen today.
“My grandfather was a religious man,” she said. “Trust in God. Be nice to the townspeople even if they make you mad. Work hard and you’ll be successful. That sounds so trite, but it was important. And be honest. Don’t cheat people. Make the best products you possibly can. Don’t skimp. Use real butter. Be respectful to your elders.”
Although their children could take over Flesor’s, Paul and Betty really encouraged their children to get a college education, though. The manual labor of running Flesor’s Candy Kitchen took a toll on them, and they wanted their children to have a better life.
Once their children were in college, Paul and Betty decided to retire in the 1970’s. The business was auctioned off. Along with the Tuscola staple, other businesses in Tuscola began to die off, and the town Devon and Ann grew up in became something they did not recognize.
With master’s degrees and families, the Flesor sisters both worked at Eastern Illinois University. Devon said she loved teaching English, but Ann was unsettled and looking for something more.
One night, over a couple bottles of wine at their mother’s house, Ann asked Devon, “If you could do anything with your life, what would it be?” In the whirlwind of intoxicated discussion, Devon and Ann decided to purchase the Flesor’s Candy Kitchen building that had been abandoned to restore it to staple they once knew.
“If anyone had said, ‘You’re going to take this one day. You going to run this store.’ We would have laughed. We would have fallen off the stool at the soda fountain. We would have rather been boiled in oil.”
“But we missed it,” Devon said. “We were nostalgic about our childhoods. But it’s one thing to be nostalgic for your childhood, and there’s another to be an adult actually hemorrhaging the money to get it going.”
With the help of several grant programs, the city of Tuscola and bank loans, the Flesor sisters renovated their father and grandfather’s kitchen to resemble what they remembered as children. The floors, booths and mirrors were restored to their former beauty.
“We are using my grandfather’s marble tables, copper kettles and knives,” Devon said. “And my dad touched them. Now I am touching them, too.”
And because the family candy making recipes were handed down to the men in the family, Devon and Ann had to get them from their brother.
“My grandfather’s recipes were held very tightly by my dad, and he only shared them with my brother,” Devon said. “My brother just handed them over.”
Reopening the store showed the sisters what a community gem Flesor’s was for more than 75 years.
“Little old ladies would come in and say, ‘My husband died five years ago, and we had our first date here 50 years ago.’ And then they’d sit there and cry. And we’d sit there and cry with them. But they were also happy because they could remember their first date. And they were so appreciative of us for recreating that space for them.”
Devon met her husband, Bob, at Flesor’s, too.
“We were two old people flirting, and now he’s making pecan caramels (on his day off),” she said.
But most of all, Devon loves that her three children, two still at home, work at Flesor’s just like she did when she was their age.
“They’ve learned so many things working here,” she said. “They are not afraid to talk to people. They are really confident. I know they’d be excellent students if they didn’t work here, but I’m not so sure they would both be class presidents, which they are.”
“They understand that manual labor is really difficult,” she continued. “I think that’s really important. I like that my kids see me lifting heavy things and working with my hands. But they also know I have an education.”
Devon’s children have also had the opportunity to work with many different types of people, including those who needed a second chance, while in Flesor’s Candy Kitchen.
“There are times when I think (buying this business) is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Devon said. “But when I go back to those two things, my husband and my children, that makes it worth it.”
She added that Flesor’s is also “a place where people feel happy.”
Through their business, the sisters have not only revitalized a place where old women can reminisce about their childhood, but have created an environment where generations of Tuscola natives and tourists can come together for breakfast, lunch or candy in a way that is not easily available in today’s atmosphere.
During the summer months, the sisters, and Mary Jane, a 75-year-old employee bring in flowers from their garden to spruce up the tables. And during breakfast hours, local farmers spend their morning talking over coffee. They also bring flowers and vegetables in for the Flesor family.
And while Devon and Ann, who love each other very much, often fight like cats and dogs, they have a shared vision for Flesor’s Candy Kitchen that will not only enhance the family business, but the Tuscola community and Main Street downtown.
Within the next year, Flesor’s Candy Kitchen will expand into the building next door, offering an expanded candy room, a banquet hall, a meeting room and additional seating. They have also been approved to be mentioned on the local attractions sign along Interstate 57.
Along with other Tuscola business owner, the Flesor sisters want to see their community come to life once again.
“The more things there are to do downtown, the more people will come,” Devon said. “We don’t want it to be just us. We all help each other.”
