CHICAGO — In 2018, Reyna Gonzalez bought Dulceria La Fiesta, a Mexican candy and party store on Clark Street in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood. About three weeks later, the building caught fire. “We lost everything,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez reopened the store in July 2020. She taught herself how to make the custom piñatas that now make up the bulk of her business. For a while, things were going well; in 2021, she said, her sales tripled. But this past winter, the omicron variant hit Chicago.
“It hit us hard,” she said. “We’ve been struggling ever since.”
