Everything got its start from the small beginnings of hand crafting chocolates to sell at craft shows.  We started out attending craft shows selling hand crafted chocolate.  After attending many craft shows, it got to the point that we made enough chocolates, that we felt, would be enough for a three-day craft show.  But as we like to say, success is painful!  We sold out the first night, and had to stay up all night making more for the next two days of the craft show.  But we underestimated again, and also sold out on the second day, and we were up once again, making chocolates for the final day of the show!  This prompted us to start thinking about opening a retail business.  Our main concern was if the chocolates had enough of a following to sustain a retail location. Looking around, we realized that there was something missing from our small community, a coffee shop!  At this point, our plans were shifting into phase, as it were.  As we continued thinking about the idea,  one thing we thought about was that in the Midwest, the summers usually bring 90-degree temperatures and 80 percent humidity.  Only die-hard coffee fanatics would want a hot cup of coffee on a day like that. This made us think, “what else were we missing in our little town?”  A good high quality hand dipped ice cream shop of course!  Now that we had our vision, we just needed a place to make it a reality. 

   A rural town like ours did not have a plethora of retail spaces to rent.  We looked around, and came upon a small little building Behind a house on the main drag of our town.  Upon further inspection, it turns out it was a small two and ½ car garage that someone had converted into a business space!  It wasn’t without its challenges, but we were able to make all the necessary improvements, put a coat of lovely eye-catching coat of purple paint on the outside and just like that, L.A. Sweets became a reality!

That’s not the end of our story though.  A friend knew that the L part of L.A. Sweets knew a thing or two about cake baking and decorating.  They came to her and asked if she could do a birthday cake, and the big-hearted woman that she is agreed to do it.  Within a week or so, people who attended the party started seeking us out to do their cakes, and voila’ the next, but not final, phase of our adventure came to be!

Things got big quick, and we soon renovated the house in front of us into a commercial business space and moved our business 40 feet forward into the house.  We remained there and continued to bring the community smiles that only a tasty cake, scoop of ice cream, container of hand made chocolates, or a divine coffee could deliver. 

As all things change, so did our stay in our renovated business space.  Since the house was built in the early 1900s, it continued to present challenges that a 100 plus year-old building brings with it.  So, we kind of started looking around for a new place to ply our trade(s).  We were offered a space in the end of a plaza that was built by a pillar of the community.  It was broken out into office spaces, but the vision of what it could be sparked the innovative spirit and challenge accepted attitude of the A part of L.A. Sweets, and so another renovation began august of 2017.  Hammers swung, saws cut, paint rollers rolled. Pipes were piped and the transformation began!

                On the coldest weekend of January 2018, we loaded up from our current location and drove a quarter mile up the road to an incredible and beautiful new space to offer the fruits of our labor. Things were going great.  In 2019 we added a deck/patio in front of our shop to utilize our walk-up window, and perhaps that was timed well.  During those bleak times of covid, the walk-up window kept us hopping!

As the pandemic settled down and people started to get out and about again, we pulled a few new tricks out of our hat.  In 2023, we noticed that there were no decent donut/breakfast pastries in our wonderful community.  So can you guess what we did?  Yes, we brought in house, fresh baked donuts and pastries to the shop.

Now you may be asking, have we run out of magic?  Oh! Just wait and see what we have in store for 2024!

Stay Tuned for another phase of our Sweet Adventure!