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Updated: August 25, 2023 @ 9:23 am
Cindy Rudisill, foreground, is the owner of Cyndi’s Sweet Shoppe, which is running out of candy to sell as preparations are being made to close the store in downtown Aiken.
Jordan Dunbar from Cyndi’s Sweet Shoppe helps a customer during a previous Small Business Saturday. (Shakailah Heard/Staff)
Aiken Standard reporter
Cindy Rudisill, foreground, is the owner of Cyndi’s Sweet Shoppe, which is running out of candy to sell as preparations are being made to close the store in downtown Aiken.
Jordan Dunbar from Cyndi’s Sweet Shoppe helps a customer during a previous Small Business Saturday. (Shakailah Heard/Staff)
The co-founder and owner of Cyndi’s Sweet Shoppe in downtown Aiken isn’t ruling out the possibility of the candy store reopening in another location.
“I don’t know,” said Cindy Rudisill earlier this week about the future of the business. “I really cannot say yes or no on that right now. Everything is very confusing now for me. It really is.”
The lease at Cyndi’s 146 Laurens St. S.W. location ends Oct. 31.
Rudisill said she is shutting down the store because her landlord told her late last year that the rental agreement wouldn’t be renewed and then later offered terms for a new lease that weren’t, for her, financially feasible.
Since Rudisill announced earlier this month on Facebook that Cyndi’s wouldn’t be around much longer, thousands of people have contacted her directly, posted on social media and visited the store offering their condolences and urging her to explore other options.
“The overwhelming support that they have given me. … I’m so blessed. I really am,” Rudisill said. “I’ve never cried this many tears about a job.”
Among those who reached out were New Ellenton Mayor Kimberly Williams, and another member of New Ellenton’s City Council.
“They wanted to now if I would like to have a future there, within their community,” Rudisill said.
In addition, a New Ellenton man who isn’t a government official let Rudisill know that he had a building available on Main Street for her to lease.
Rudisill also has talked to Jason Long, an executive with Augusta-based Southeastern Development Associates, which is spearheading the creation of Aiken Towne Park on the former site of the Aiken Mall.
An Aiken City Council member “hooked me up with him,” Rudisill said. “He is a very nice man. He was so sweet. He told me the square footage I could have. It would be more than I could afford, but he told me that he really wanted me to still continue to think about it. It’s in the back of my head. I even called him a second time to ask him something.”
Through the fellow owner of a candy store in Pendleton, Rudisill has learned that Newberry officials would like to have such a business in their city.
“She has been approached by them,” Rudisill said. “She gave me the name to contact there.”
And on social media, people have suggested that Rudisill should considering reopening Cyndi’s in places such as Edgefield, Johnston and North Augusta.
“I would be willing to talk to anyone,” she said.
Business at Cyndi’s lately has been booming.
Rudisill said it has been similar to the pre-Christmas surges that her store has enjoyed in the past.
Many of the shelves and bins in Cyndi’s are empty, and there is no ice cream remaining to purchase.
Rudisill wrote in a text message Thursday morning that the store would be “open until Saturday if we have the product.
“Then we will close and reopen the next weekend to sell everything else, meaning all the equipment left, [items used for] window and store displays,” and more, she added.
Nearly all the antiques that were in Cyndi’s are scheduled to be sold in an auction in December.
Rudisill, who previously worked in the health care field, and her husband, Dick, are the founders of Cyndi’s, which opened in 2013. It was Dick’s idea to start a business that had the look and feel of an old-fashioned candy store.
Because he suffered a stroke two years ago, Dick’s involvement in the Cyndi’s has decreased significantly.
Reopening the store somewhere else “would really be up to me because I am the one who owns it at this point,” Rudisill said.
Meanwhile, her heart is heavy as she and her staff prepare to close Cyndi’s on Laurens Street for good.
“Nobody can be more disappointed than me,” Rudisill said. “I went through being really angry and now I’m sad. It’s going to kill me when I walk out the door for the last time.”
Aiken Standard reporter
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