CHICAGO — Clutching a wad of cash in a white-gloved hand, Carla Newman scours the nearly empty Fannie May candy shop for remnants of her childhood.
Every holiday, a slim box picturing a Chicago skyline would find its way onto the coffee table. Easter called for boxes filled with Mint Melt A Ways and their bright-green taste of spring. Christmas was time for Trinidads, with golden chocolate and the crunch of coconut. And for Valentine's Day, Cupid always delivered piles of Pixies, oozing with caramel.
But now -- as Fannie May's parent company files for bankruptcy and prepares to shut down the century-old Chicago candy giant and its legion of retail stores on Sunday -- Newman is hoarding chocolate.
"It kills me that this is happening right on Valentine's Day," says Newman, 58, a retired schoolteacher shopping for herself and her three grandchildren. "A Chicago without Fannie May is like a Chicago without snow, a Chicago without the Cubs. It's a part of this city's heritage."
Though Chicago and the surrounding region make the greatest volume of candy in the country and employ the largest number of candy workers, the economic picture here has become increasingly sour. In the last decade, the region's candy industry has shrunk 38%, down to about 7,400 workers, Illinois employment officials say.
Officials like Mayor Richard M. Daley, blaming the rising costs of labor and raw materials needed to make candy, see this as a painful lesson in international economics. It's also a frustrating reminder that this city's $4-billion candy industry -- and Chicago's manufacturing legacy -- is slipping away.
"The closing of Fannie May isn't only about jobs lost," Daley said in a statement. "Chicago has lost one of its most identifiable and beloved cultural icons."
Analysts who track the industry say the true downfall of companies like Fannie May rests in America's changing chocolate-eating habits.
During the company's heyday in the 1950s and '60s, people often took a box of chocolates when they visited friends and relatives. Businesses like Fannie May and Russell Stover in the Midwest and See's Candies on the West Coast tapped into such social niceties with glossy boxes filled with sweet surprises. You reached in, hoping for one with caramel filling rather than pineapple or peach.
But "times have changed, and Americans are on low-carbohydrate diets," said Leonard Teitelbaum, a managing director at Merrill Lynch who tracks the industry. "Polite company brings wine or flowers, not sweets."
When people do indulge, they tend to choose a more decadent treat -- one that sells for more than $60 a pound, rather than mid-range chocolates at $10 to $20 a pound. The public is developing a discriminating attitude about its chocolate, and companies like Fannie May haven't kept up.
"The box makers are all suffering from the artisan chocolate makers, who are up and coming," said Barbara Murray, industry editor with the online business publication Hoover's. "Part of the appeal is snobbery. The real driver is that people want more quality from their chocolate, and they'll pay for it."
Though there have long been niche players in the business, analysts say the trend toward high-end took off with Godiva, a subsidiary of Campbell Soup. Godiva has always been marketed to people with a taste for finer goodies.
Now Godiva has found itself having to reach even higher, reflected in the recent launch of its G line. Described as "edible works of art," the collection includes delicately designed truffles made from Ecuadorian cocoa, Sicilian pistachios and Tahitian vanilla.
A pound of G chocolates costs $100 and has a shelf life of three weeks. In contrast, a pound of Fannie May Pixies costs $18.95. Though Fannie May recommends that Pixie lovers eat the candy within three weeks, the company said the treats could last indefinitely if carefully wrapped and frozen.
"Godiva is sold in a sleek gold box with a modern but classic-looking print. That appeals to a younger audience," said Nicole Hanrahan, director of the Candy Institute, a nonprofit research group based in Chicago. "The average Fannie May customer was 65 years old, and their packaging looks like grandma candy. Fannie May didn't change as times changed, and that killed them."
Taking advantage of the consumer shift, more boutique companies are cropping up to sell chocolate as they would wine, coffee or cigars. Half a dozen new high-end chocolatiers have debuted or expanded their presence in Chicago since 2000, while dozens more have launched in New York and in California.
At the Dean & DeLuca store in St. Helena in the Napa Valley, the staff makes suggestions about what beverages work best to bring out the subtleties of dark chocolate. French company Valrhona even identifies its chocolates by vintage -- the year in which the cocoa beans were grown and harvested in a particular part of Venezuela.
