Spring Break
Sugar and spice
Crystal Lindell
Issue date: 9/29/04 Section: News
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"I wanted a change and I've never, ever regretted it," Lester said.
The short wooden shelves of the store are filled with apple butter, potatoes, lemon drops, sprinkles and whole-wheat baking products.
"I have one customer who swears by the whole-wheat on losing weight," she said. "She's lost over 100 pounds since the first of the year."
Sugar and Spice also sells over 90 different spices. Lester said one woman drives all the way from Springfield to buy Saffron, a Spanish spice used for rice and soups, from the store. The store also sells crystallized ginger.
"I don't like it, but there's people out there who do," Lester said.
The store has soy candles for sale on a table by the register. Lester said she wanted to keep the business as local as possible, so she called the Colchester FFA and asked it to make soy candles for her to sell and she would then pass along the profits. However, the members said they would be unable to keep up with that type of demand, so Lester found a mother-daughter team in Macomb to make them.
After traveling about 90 miles to find similar stores for her own needs, Lester realized the hole in the local market.
"I had seen stores like this run by Mennonites or the Amish in Iowa," she said.
Three years ago she read an article in a cooking magazine about a woman who had a bulk food store, so she looked up the woman and gave her a call. She was hoping the owner would be able to tell her how to start up her own similar business.
"I called the woman and told her I had some vacation time coming up and that I wanted to come see her store," Lester said. "She said I could come see her store, but she wouldn't help me. She said 'no one helped me and I won't help you.'"
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