Chicago small businesses weigh raising prices as inflation takes toll. ‘They feel the pain a lot more than larger corporations do’

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.”

Because the store was closed in 2019, Gonzalez wasn’t eligible for most pandemic relief programs, such as the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which require tax documents from 2019. She said she and her husband, who maintains a job outside the business, have