A Family Business Provides Candy and Comfort in an Illinois Downtown
In 2004, Devon Flesor Story and her older sister, Ann Flesor Beck, rebooted their family’s confectionery and restaurant in downtown Tuscola, Illinois. Founded in 1901 by the sisters’ grandfather Gus Flesor, who learned candy-making from fellow Greek immigrants in the Midwest, Flesor’s Candy Kitchen served delectable sweets and gloriously greasy hamburgers to Tuscola’s tight-knit community for several decades. Story and Beck’s parents took over in the 1960s, but the rise of malls and fast food hurt the small downtown, and Flesor’s shuttered in the late 1970s. The 1871 brick building that had housed the business changed ownership a few times after that, but it sat empty until Story and Beck (who is now retired) decided to bring it back into the family.
Sixteen years later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While Flesor’s survived, Story knew the building itself needed some repairs. She applied for and received a $40,000 grant from American Express and the National Trust’s Backing Historic Small Restaurants program in 2023. The project, however, turned into a much larger and much more expensive endeavor. We spoke to Story about the nearly $300,000 restoration, which mostly wrapped up in summer 2024.
What inspired you and Ann to bring Flesor’s back?
My older sister moved back to the area, and I was teaching at Eastern Illinois University. Here we were, together again. The building came up for sale. She suggested that we have a meeting, and she brought wine because whenever my family has something serious to discuss, we have a tendency to drink. My sister talked me into going back into the family business and quitting my perfectly good job with summers off and holidays off and health insurance.
How did you get the restaurant back in shape?
It was a lot of work. We were on our hands and knees scraping our terrazzo floor that had gross filth all over it. We were down in the basement with shovels, scraping dirt out of the basement. I took layers of paint off a display window with a heat gun.
photo by: Matthew Gilson
Co-owner Devon Flesor Story at the soda fountain.
Why did you decide to push through during the pandemic?
We’ve had dark moments, but we’ve never quit. We knew that COVID was temporary, so we paid our bank loan, and we kept going. Our feeling was that if we were to close, our town would suffer mightily. We’re a little downtown, and [Flesor’s is] the anchor.
Your restoration project was bigger than you anticipated. What did you discover?
We were going to remove some rotten wood on the facade of our building, and we were going to restore it or replace it. The carpenter started taking the wood from around the window, and there was some wood on top of a beam that was rotten. So he pulled it, and we discovered that the beam holding up the entire wall was rotten.
The brick above the beam was loose. We hired a structural engineer to evaluate. He discovered that the beam on the other wall was also compromised. They started poking through the brick on both the north wall and the east wall. There were three layers of brick, and from what I understand, the middle layer was dust.
So it had to come down. We replaced the beams with steel beams, and then they built the wall back up. The street was blocked for about a month.
You own two other buildings next door, but how did it feel to reopen the original space?
We moved back into our first building just in time for us to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We had a big street party with music and bouncy houses. It was great.
Does it still feel like the original building?
If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. It is gorgeous. The brick mason and his company were fantastic. Our beloved Coca-Cola mural was also repainted. The person who repainted it, Ainslie Heilich, worked very hard to make it historically accurate.
photo by: Matthew Gilson
An old Coca-Cola mural at Flesor's was repainted.
The interior is the same. We have a store full of antiques that are over a hundred years old. I mean, we have the original marble bar. We have the original phone booth.
How has the community reacted?
People love it. And every day they thank us for saving the building. The testimony to their devotion to our project is the fact that our customers donated just over $100,000 to help us do this.
What should our readers order if they drop in?
We have great Reuben sandwiches. On Sundays, we have after-church food, if you know what I mean. Pot roast or country-fried chicken. People like that kind of Midwestern comfort food. Occasionally on Saturdays I’ll make Greek food, but half the time it’s my family who chows down on that.
Our candy is really, really good. Our [chocolate, caramel, and pecan] turtles, we’ve been told, are the best that our customers have ever had. We also make this peanut-butter-and-chocolate candy that’s killer. Our caramel is great. My grandfather’s recipe is fantastic, and we still make everything over an open flame in a copper kettle and stir our candy with a paddle.
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