Vote for Sweet Candy Café by March 9, 2021: https://start.nav.com/vote/?navgrant=SweetCandyCafe
Business Name: Sweet Candy Café
Business State: North Carolina
Sweet Candy Café is a confectionery storefront in Lumberton, North Carolina, offering over 92 different kinds of candy guaranteed to satisfy your sweet tooth.
Established in 2012, Sweet Candy Café and owner Felicia Evans Long have faced a variety of challenges from fire damage to the original storefront building a month before opening, to dealing with the aftermath of both Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence. However, the biggest challenge we faced was the unexpected passing of co-owner Timothy Long in 2014. Tim was Felicia's husband, business partner, and biggest supporter. His love and support were instrumental in turning Felicia's dream of a candy store in her hometown into a reality. With the help of family, friends, and the local community, Felicia and the Sweet Candy Café team rebuild stronger and brighter after every challenge, keeping Tim's passion for life and helping the community in mind.
2020 and 2021 have brought a variety of challenges as Sweet Candy Café (and the rest of the world) deal with COVID-19 pandemic. As in-store shopping and business declined, Sweet Candy Café pivoted towards generating more traffic on the website, expanding candy offerings in the online store, and coming up with new ways to generate more business. We reached out to our local radio station and purchased on-air and online advertising around the Thanksgiving holiday (and our 8th store anniversary) to promote the store.
If we receive this grant, we will use the funds to increase our advertising and social media efforts, address issues at our storefront, and continue to keep our hard working, college student staff employed through these difficult times.