Something sweet is coming to McAdenville

Life is Sweet, a new candy store, recently opened in McAdenville.

According to the owner, Tracy Gunn, she plans to give one new customer free candy for a year.

While Gunn is new to North Carolina, she is not new to running a candy store.

She opened her first Life is Sweet in Keene, New Hampshire, 18 years ago.

At the time, Gunn’s previously homeschooled children had just started public school, and the family was experiencing hardship. So, she opened the candy shop and named it Life is Sweet, a mantra to remind herself there would be better times ahead, she said.

Gunn and her husband at the time were from New York but had relocated to New Hampshire after her husband was impacted by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

“My husband at the time was in 9/11, and after a year or two, he didn’t want to be where buildings fell on you,” she said. “We moved to New Hampshire, and so, we went from Long Islanders, which is a very busy, strip-mallish kind of thing to this community, this quintessential, New England town with a Main Street.”

One day, while having lunch with a friend and searching for the right place to start a different business she had in mind, Gunn was looking for dessert, and could not find any.

“We’re dessert people and I was like, ‘I need something sweet,’” she said. “We walked Main Street and there was nothing … So, when I was looking at spaces for this other business, this one building I looked at had these creaky old floors and I was like, this would be a great candy store.”

Gunn opened her first shop, which temporarily grew into a two-location business, but was reduced to just the original location in Keene when the pandemic began in 2020.

Consolidating the two locations in New England was just the excuse Gunn was looking for to move to North Carolina, she said.

In 2019 her daughter, who lived in North Carolina, had given birth to Gunn’s first grandchild.

Gunn was looking for a way to move closer to them, she said.

She finally made the move and said she found McAdenville to be the perfect place to restart her sweet vocation.

What sets Life is Sweet apart from grocery-store candy is the ability to customize a bag of candy, she said.

All bulk candy is the same price, $5 per pound, so customers can choose how much of any given candy to put in a bag, which is then charged by weight.

Gunn said the scale is available throughout the experience so customers can weigh and see their cost as often as they like.

In addition to chocolate, gummies and fudge, the shop will also sell retro candy and Gunn is considering expanding into cupcakes eventually.

She said she hopes to meet the community at a grand opening celebration set to take place noon-5 p.m. Saturday at her new shop at 109 Main St.

At the event, visitors can fill out an entry form for a contest to win a year of free candy.

Candy enthusiasts can also enter the contest on the shop’s website www.lifeissweetcandystore.com.

Life is Sweet is open Tuesday-Thursday noon-8 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon-9 p.m., and Sunday noon-5 p.m.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Something sweet is coming to McAdenville