Marcus Lemonis spends most of his time in his Chicago-area offices.
The host of “The Profit” also is an investor in Sweet Pete’s, the Downtown Jacksonville candy store.
Although Lemonis has a house in Ponte Vedra, he wanted Sweet Pete’s a little closer to home.
He’ll have that now with the candy store’s first expansion about 15 minutes from his Illinois office. Lemonis and Sweet Pete founders Pete and Allison Behringer announced Friday they had acquired The Jolly Good Fellows retail store in Lake Forest, Ill.
“I got tired of paying the UPS charges (for candy),” Lemonis joked by phone Friday afternoon.
Lemonis said having the storefront near his office allows him to see the candies and concepts created as the business begins its expansion efforts.
The Jolly Good Fellows store has been a good business, but the concept will be changed to Sweet Pete’s familiar parlor and old-school candy shop motif.
Regional expansion often occurs first, but Allison Behringer said they “went pretty far” with the Chicago-area idea.
Lemonis said the deal came about in the past two-and-a-half weeks. “I move pretty fast,” he said.
The location is across from a popular train stop with good foot traffic, Behringer said. She said she was “shocked” at how similar the business was to Sweet Pete’s.
The store’s 10 employees will be retained. A Sweet Pete’s candy maker will relocate to Illinois. The Behringers will frequently travel back and forth as the business becomes established.
Lemonis said the build-out should take no longer than 45 days and will be a “micro version” of the Hogan Street location, albeit without a restaurant like the Candy Apple Café & Cocktails.
Teaching kids will still be a large premise of the business, with the Chicago location’s basement serving that need.
Allison Behringer said the total space is about 4,000 square feet.
“The Jacksonville location has just blown away,” she said. “There’s so much potential … it’s a fun time for us to grow.”
While she doesn’t have specific markets she envisions growing next, Lemonis suggested areas like South Florida, the Carolinas, Ohio and other top 25 markets. That excludes higher-cost areas like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are more cost prohibitive, he said.
If the Chicago concept works as he believes it will, Lemonis said he’d like to roll out one- to two stores a year.
While the company is expanding in the Chicago area, immediate plans for Jacksonville are on hold.
Lemonis was under contract to purchase two Downtown buildings — 424 N. Hogan St. and 218 W. Church St.
The idea would have been to create more parking, event and storage space for the successful Downtown venture.
Lemonis said Friday he’s backed off those contracts, given the interest from others.
Florida State College at Jacksonville has been looking at 218 W. Church St. — the former Florida Baptist Convention Building — for potential student housing. That deal would complement another building across the street, 502 N. Hogan St., for a culinary enterprise and civic engagement center.
When media reports in mid-July surfaced of the schools interest in the Church Street building, Lemonis said he would yield to those plans but wanted to hear more.
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