When it comes to business, life is sweet for Erin Schultz. The 38-year-old has two shops in Kalamazoo — Schultz’s Treat Street on Oakland Drive and Schultz Sweets on West Main Street. The first is an ice cream shop, and the second a confectionary and café.
A former architect, Schultz made her official foray into shop ownership in 2020 when she and her husband, Keith, became the fourth owners of the former Treat Street, the beloved ice cream shop in Oakwood Plaza that opened in 1998.
The purchase fulfilled a long-harbored dream for Schultz. “Ice cream shops are emotional places. It’s often the place where we share our earliest core memories with family,” she says. “Even when I was a little kid, I always wanted an ice cream shop, but it didn’t seem like a grown-up goal.”
Treat Street has always had a “malt shop” vibe, with its classic ice cream counter, its painted mural depicting the neighborhood and, of course, its prime location across from Woods Lake. It also has a sunny corner overflowing with local soaps and trinkets for sale. The shop bursts with nostalgia. And Schultz had no desire to change that.
“It’s a cornerstone — the last traditional ice cream shop in Kalamazoo and the only location that is ice cream focused,” she says.
Among the Schultzes’ first actions was to spruce up the community mural with the help of local artist Gerald King. King added a greater diversity of characters to the mural and updated the scene’s street signs to include “Bronco Blvd.” and “Wolverine Way,” as a nod to the owners’ alma maters, Western Michigan University (Keith) and the University of Michigan (Erin).
The Schultzes started managing the shop in May 2020 before taking full ownership in August of that year, a challenging year to become a new business owner because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Schultzes were buoyed by “an incredible community of restaurant owners in our region” who boosted one another’s restaurants and shops on social media, shared resources and tools, and cheered one another on through slow times, Schultz says. It was a community that would encourage Schultz in her future ventures.
Started with caramels
How Erin Schultz (née Stuedemann) started in the sweet business, however, is a sad story. In 2006, the Mattawan native moved to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan’s architecture program. During her first year at college, two of her Mattawan High School classmates died: Lance Corporal Luis Castillo, who succumbed to injuries sustained in combat while serving in the vicinity of Al Anbar Province, Iraq, on Jan. 20, 2007, and U.S. Army Spc. Jimmy Arnold, who died in action in Iraq on March 15, 2007, during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The loss of those peers in a faraway, ongoing war was confusing and isolating for Schultz, and she felt overcome with grief. “It wasn’t productive to just sit and be sad. I started stress baking,” she says.
Her endless supply of homemade cookies and brownies fueled her college classmates’ long hours in the architecture studio, and she frequently returned home to Mattawan on weekends in search of respite and community. During one of those weekends her mom suggested she learn about caramels.
“She was so right!” Erin says emphatically. “There was something therapeutic about dumping sugar into a pot and then standing there stirring, waiting, stirring, getting lost in the color and texture as it turned into caramel. Each element of the process brought me some calm: stirring, cooling, cutting the caramels by hand, even wrapping each individual piece in parchment paper.”
Schultz’s caramel hobby continued off and on over the next few years. In 2011, she married Keith Schultz, a former WMU football player and current senior project manager at Holtec International. The two settled in Kalamazoo to raise a family (they now have three children). Erin revisited her caramel hobby, and soon the hobby began to grow. She began selling her caramels through pop-up candy shops at various locations in Southwest Michigan under the name “Mrs. Schultz’s Sweets.”
A second shop
After taking over Treat Street, Schultz continued to build up her caramel confectionary prowess. She knew that her production goals would outgrow the Treat Street kitchen. She recalls “the CocoaBomb craze of 2020,” when Treat Street handcrafted more than 5,000 stuffed meltaway hot cocoa spheres in the weeks leading up to Christmas. As those and other confectionary products continued to grow in popularity, Schultz realized she was quickly going to need a bigger space.
She and business partner Kristina Smith opened Schultz Sweets at 6857 W. Main St. in December 2023.
It’s a bright and airy café space with large windows allowing visitors to view caramel production in action. The atmosphere is luxurious, with navy walls and gold Art Deco trimmings. But the details honor her regional roots. There’s an enormous portrait at the entrance — a relic given to Schultz by the original owner of the High Wheeler Ice Cream Parlor, which had three locations in Kalamazoo in the 1970s and ’80s. The coffee served by Schultz Sweets is sourced from Celery City Roasters in Portage, while MOO-ville Ice Cream of Nashville provides the dairy treats. Nearly every tool in the sweet shop’s kitchen is pre-owned and pre-loved, such as a caramel cutter given to Schultz by Maria Brennan, owner of The Victorian Bakery.
“I couldn’t have dreamed of opening Schultz Sweets without the longstanding encouragement from these business partners or other restaurant owners,” Schultz says. “Those relationships have been so crucial and special, especially over the last few years. Even if we aren’t sharing tools or recipes, just having support from others who are in the thick of it makes a world of difference. I’m really proud to be an active part of the local restaurant and confectionery industry.”
Schultz Sweets’ confectionery menu is extensive: 17 flavors of handmade caramels (11 regular and six seasonal flavors on rotation throughout the year), glazed nuts, fudge, truffles, enrobed chocolates, pecan pralines, caramel pretzels, and “Donatello” treats (because the word “Turtle” is trademarked).
Homemade breakfast and lunch options, by way of wraps, salads and sandwiches, “offer lightness alongside decadence,” Schultz says.
Looking ahead, Schultz hopes to expand the business through regular wholesale contracts and by increasing corporate partnerships. As growth is on the horizon, Schultz knows that she will remain true to her local roots.
“Supporting a local business doesn’t just come back to benefit me as the business owner,” she says, buzzing with passion. “We’re so early in this business — I’ve only paid myself twice this year, and we’re paying down lots of foundational expenses.
“It’s not about me. It’s about being an active part of a larger community. Every dollar spent at a local business is an investment in each of the nearly 40 employees across our locations, and that investment ripples out to the children of those employees and those kids’ schools or sports teams or whatever they do that enriches their lives right here. It’s about the connections we all share. Supporting a local business is what you do when you want your community to thrive.”
