For nearly 30 years, generations of Allentown customers have walked into Bruno’s One Sweet Ride for homemade chocolates, old-fashioned candy and the kind of small-town conversation that comes with both.
Soon, they will be making that stop somewhere new.
Heather Saracen, who runs the candy side of Bruno’s, is moving her chocolates from the longtime shop at 19 S. Main St. into Village Pharmacy at 1278 Yardville-Allentown Road after a rent increase made it impossible for the business to remain in its current space.
The change is significant, but Saracen does not see it as an ending.
“This is not the end,” she said. “It’s just a new start for something that’s going to be even better.”
Village Pharmacy’s owners and staff stepped forward and offered Saracen space to sell her chocolates inside the store, giving a nearly 30-year-old Allentown business a way to remain connected to the community that helped build it.
Saracen expects her products to begin appearing there around the end of September or beginning of October, after she has had time to pack up the Main Street shop, reorganize the business and prepare inventory.
“They have welcomed me in with open arms,” Saracen said. “They’re very excited. We’re all very excited about it. It’ll be different, but it will still be home for us.”
Mayor Thomas Fritts, who worked behind the scenes to help Saracen find a new home, said the partnership provides opportunities for both businesses.
“We are thrilled to see Heather Bruno’s new partnership,” Fritts said in a statement. “While I do not get entangled in private landlord-tenant issues, my energy remains focused on keeping businesses open and facilitating growth. I see a resilient community of entrepreneurs who care deeply about Allentown, and I promise that if there is a way to support your business, we will find it.”
For Saracen, the move is about more than finding shelf space for chocolate. It is about staying connected to a town that has been part of her life and business for nearly three decades.
“This community is my heart and soul,” she said. “The people in this community have supported my business for almost 30 years. They have been wonderful to me.”
September would have marked the business’s 30th year, making the timing of the move especially significant for Saracen.
When she announced that the Main Street store would be closing, she said the response was overwhelming. Customers shared the news online, tagged media outlets and reached out to tell her what the shop had meant to them.
That reaction reflected the long relationship between Bruno’s and Allentown.
Saracen moved to the borough in 1994 after she and her then-husband came to town while considering the purchase of a chiropractic practice.
She quickly fell in love with Allentown.
One of her earliest memories of the town came during the Christmas season, when she saw people dressed in Victorian clothing singing carols while children filled the downtown streets.
“I’m like, this is where we have to move,” she recalled.
The candy shop followed soon afterward.
Saracen had long wanted to open one because of childhood memories of Sundays spent with her grandmother. After church, if Saracen had behaved, her grandmother would take her to a candy store and let her pick something out.
“I just always wanted to make those memories for other people,” Saracen said.
Saracen did not come to the business with formal training as a chocolatier. She began making candy for family and friends and taught herself the craft over time.
As people repeatedly encouraged her to turn it into a business, the idea began to seem less like a someday plan and more like something she could actually build.
She called her father, Jim Bruno, and told him they should give it a try.
Her father, who owned a contracting business, became her partner.
“My dad was always up for an adventure,” she said.
Bruno’s began as a traditional candy store, but it did not stay that way for long.
Kids who frequented the shop created a suggestion box and began asking Saracen and her father to sell skateboards. The pair listened.
They brought in skateboards and quickly sold out. Eventually they added a game room for local kids, and as skateboarding trends changed, the business expanded into bicycles.
For a time, the candy store and bike shop operated in separate locations. They eventually moved into the same building, creating the unusual combination that became Bruno’s One Sweet Ride: bicycle sales and repairs on one side and homemade chocolates and old-fashioned candy on the other.
Saracen handled the candy business while her father became the bike expert.
“He could build anything, fix anything,” she said.
Jim Bruno also became a familiar figure around Allentown. Saracen said people jokingly called him the “Mayor of Allentown” because he seemed to know everyone and was constantly stopping to talk with people.
That community streak extended beyond the shop. Bruno was a drummer, and Saracen recalled that he would bring bands to the family’s backyard for free community concerts. Neighbors would arrive with lawn chairs and coolers while the family served hamburgers and hot dogs.
Although he did not live in the borough, he spent so much time at the business and in the community that many customers assumed he did.
“People would come in just to chit-chat with him,” Saracen said.
Her father died about five years ago.
Saracen tried running the bicycle side herself for about a year before realizing her talents were in chocolate, not bicycles. She eventually sold the bike operation to the shop’s mechanic, Chris, allowing the business her father helped build to continue.
The two sides remained under the same roof, but they are now heading to separate locations.
The bike shop is moving to 1905 Route 33, Unit 8, in the Concord Square Shopping Plaza.
Saracen will concentrate on the chocolates. Although the physical setup inside Village Pharmacy will be different from the Main Street shop, customers should recognize the products.
Saracen plans to continue offering truffles, chocolate-covered pretzels, Oreos, graham crackers, butter creams, butter crunch, bark, jumbo peanut butter cups and other homemade chocolates.
Some of Bruno’s old-fashioned candy will also make the move.
Custom orders will continue as well, including party trays, favors, dipped fruit and chocolates that can be customized with logos for businesses, organizations and special events.
“All the same stuff everybody’s familiar with,” Saracen said.
Customers will be able to purchase packaged chocolates at Village Pharmacy, place custom orders and pick those orders up at the pharmacy. Saracen also plans to offer local delivery and online ordering.
That will require a change in the way she has traditionally done business.
For years, Bruno’s website was largely geared toward holiday and corporate orders because everyday customers simply walked through the door on Main Street. Saracen is now expanding the site to include more of the products customers would normally have purchased in person.
She expects the updated site at brunosonesweetride.com to be fully stocked with products by the end of September.
“I’m more of a walk-in, my customers-deal-with-me kind of person,” she said. “So I never used it all that much except around the holidays.”
Saracen also intends to spend time at Village Pharmacy so longtime customers will have opportunities to see her, particularly during the busier holiday season.
That personal connection is one of the things she expects to miss most about having her own storefront.
“I’ve been very lucky,” she said. “I spent the last 29 and a half years getting to know my customers, calling them my friends, and it’s been amazing.”
That connection extends beyond the customers who have visited Bruno’s over the years.
Saracen has been heavily involved in the Allentown business community since the 1990s. She has served multiple terms as president and vice president of the Allentown Business Association and for more than 20 years helped coordinate community events, including the spring stroll and fall festival.
Bruno’s also has served as an incubator of sorts for other local businesses.
Saracen said she has allowed entrepreneurs to operate from her store while they tested whether their concepts could succeed in town, including clothing businesses, a bakery and specialty food sellers.
“Anybody that basically has needed a hand, we’ve tried to open up our doors to them and give them a platform to test the waters,” she said.
Now another small business is doing something similar for her.
Saracen sees the partnership with Village Pharmacy as more than a temporary solution. Customers coming in for prescriptions may discover Bruno’s chocolates, while Bruno’s customers may discover an independently owned pharmacy they had not previously used.
“She’s a small-business owner,” Saracen said of the pharmacy. “She’s not a CVS or a Walgreens. She’s a small-business owner trudging along like the rest of us. And maybe this helps us both.”
Saracen has not ruled out eventually opening another dedicated Bruno’s candy shop in downtown Allentown.
She remains interested in finding a small, affordable space where the business could operate in the future. Even if that happens, she said she could envision maintaining the Village Pharmacy relationship.
For now, her focus is on completing the transition and making sure customers know that the chocolates they have purchased for birthdays, holidays, parties and everyday treats are not disappearing.
“I just wholeheartedly believe that good is going to come from this,” Saracen said.
She also wants customers to remember the businesses that are helping keep both parts of Bruno’s One Sweet Ride going.
“Support Village Pharmacy, support me,” she said. “I think it can be a beautiful relationship, whether I find another spot or not.”
After nearly three decades of changes, from candy to skateboards to bicycles and now to a new home inside another local business, Saracen is ready to see where the next chapter takes Bruno’s.
“This is not the end,” she said. “It’s just a new start for something that’s going to be even better.”
