“I’d say I’m excited and scared, but I’ve got a good captain and we have a great team,” Tom said. “It’s just perfect timing.”

After closing their downtown store in 2011 and subsequently housing the business out of their home for several years, the husband and wife duo moved to the 13th Street District in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and, surprisingly, enjoyed great success.

“About two years ago, I started thinking about expansion into another location, so we have thought about a lot of places that would make sense for Lillie Mae. And Clear Lake was one of the places that made sense because it has an opposite busy season of our current busy season,” Aimee said. “So I think it really makes sense.”

Clear Lake, of course, is known as one of Iowa’s most popular tourist destinations with a surge in summer visitors, while Lillie Mae’s Marshalltown store is actually busiest in the fall and winter. When Aimee first broached the idea of expansion with her accountant, she was urged to wait a bit longer and see how things were going. This year, however, he immediately gave her the green light, and the couple started looking for spaces in Clear Lake not long afterward.

Lillie Mae Chocolates at 217 N. 13th St., known for its wide array of sweet treats ranging from caramels to ice cream to popcorn, will be opening a second location in Clear Lake this year.

They found the right spot in the downtown area on Main Avenue at the former site of the Town Pump.

“We’ve got great landlords that we’re renting from, and everything’s gone really well so far,” Aimee said. “Of course, everything’s just a little bit more expensive than I was planning on, but we found some popcorn equipment so we’ll be making popcorn there. Everything else will be made here in Marshalltown, either at the store or at our manufacturing facility.”

They’ll be making the caramel, fudge and dipped chocolates here before they are shipped up to Clear Lake for packaging, while popcorn and ice cream cones will be made (and dipped) at the second store.

“(Employees are) still doing things in front of the customer, which is super important to our business. We want customers to know that it’s made right there or it’s made fresh and really be a part of the experience, and they’ll still do that there,” Aimee said. “We’re also going to be having a big TV on the wall that will be looping Lillie Mae footage from this store so they can see how things are made constantly. It’ll have some historical information, and it should be fun.”

The layout and setup will be similar to the Marshalltown store with a few unique wrinkles, and the goal of bringing joy to customers and staff through candy will remain the same.

“It’s a happy place. We love it, and so this is just an extension of that. That’s the goal there as well. We have a great staff here, and like I said, things get a little light in the summer, so it would be nice just to be able to add more staff,” Aimee said. “That’s our goal is to add some staff up there but keep growing our business here.”

The long-term goal is to open a third store and then franchise the Lillie Mae brand after that. The tentative plan is for Tom and Aimee to head up to Clear Lake on Thursdays nights and head back home on Saturdays or Sundays, and they’ll be looking to hire a manager.

With support in the community where both owners grew up and still reside as well as the one they’re moving into, It’s an exciting time for Lillie Mae, and Tom and Aimee are ready to dive into this next adventure head first.

“As an entrepreneur, sometimes you’re too stubborn to know better, you know what I’m saying? So if you overthink it and get worried about it, it’s hard to be successful in business, I think,” Aimee said. “You need to be very well planned out, and I’m super planned out. I always have a business plan. I’ve always run the numbers, but ultimately, you just have to get over your own fear and move forward. So that’s what we’re doing here, and I’m very conservative on the numbers and they look very good. So we’re really excited. I think it’s just good things for Lillie Mae moving forward.”