At 111 W. Front St. in downtown Wheaton, a candy and popcorn shop just 49 inches wide and 60 feet deep has been serving customers out of a converted alleyway since 1921, and it's now marking its 105th year in business. The Little Popcorn Store still cooks its popcorn on-site with a hand-cranked corn popper, and its cash drawer is a repurposed muffin pan the family calls the ernie bank.
The shop's earliest history traces to E. Claire Brown and Irma Brown Newland, whose father, Ernest Clair Brown, set up the store for his daughter, according to WBEZ Chicago. Brown, who also worked as an accountant in downtown Chicago and for the Pullman railroad-car company, was 78 years old in 1949 when the Chicago Tribune dubbed him the undisputed popcorn king of Wheaton, per the same account. The very first iteration of the store, before it moved to its current location in 1935, was described as just three inches wide — six inches narrower than today's shop. The Brown family ran the store for more than half a century, into the late 1970s, and the original owner reportedly called it the in-between store.
Donna Wakefield's family has owned the shop since 1979, after her parents bought it that year. Her brother, Bill Wakefield, ran day-to-day operations from 1986 until his death in August 2019 at age 67 following a battle with cancer, a loss that drew more than 1,000 public tributes from community members who recalled visiting the shop across generations, according to Patch. Donna Wakefield has run the store since 2019, having promised her brother during his illness that she would keep it operating to reach its 100th anniversary, which the shop celebrated throughout 2021, the Daily Herald reported. She retired from her position as a professor of special education at National Louis University in the summer of 2026, per WBEZ.
A Building Squeezed From Two Old Alleyways
The Little Popcorn Store is probably the skinniest retail space in the Chicago area, WBEZ notes, built by enclosing what was once a narrow pedestrian alley between two brick commercial buildings. Its interior walls are the exposed exterior brick of the neighboring structures, and because of that origin, its official postal address still carries a fractional designation as 111 ¼ W. Front St., according to the Daily Herald. Store operators raised the ceiling over the years to about 12 feet high, and the shop's basement extends under the sidewalk outside, running slightly longer than 60 feet.
Donna Wakefield has said the infill location keeps her property tax bill low, per WBEZ's report. The narrow, linear layout includes a candy and popcorn retail floor, a cashier stand, a space for cooking fresh popcorn, an employee bathroom, and a back-of-house area, all connected by glass front and back doors. Over time, operators added candy racks along with references to the Chicago Cubs and Ernie Banks, a nod baked into the muffin-tin cash drawer's nickname.
Generations Of Wheaton Kids And A Tiny Kitchen's Big Output
Boys from St. Michael's Catholic School once walked four blocks to reach the store, and sisters Linda Hakimi and Laura Strong — two of the Browns' six daughters — remembered buying penny candy there as children in the 1960s. Hakimi now lives in Bakersfield, California, and Strong lives in Sugar Grove, Illinois; another visitor, Kirsty Stalder, who is from Utah, returned to the shop after 38 years away, according to WBEZ. Nearby, Woolworth's closed long ago and the Wheaton Grand Theater has since become a performing arts center, but the popcorn store has kept going in the same spot since 1935.
The shop still pops its corn in cottonseed oil using a hand-cranked popper of the same type the Brown family used decades ago, sourcing kernels from the Bensenville-based Concession Company Gold Medal, per WBEZ. Donna Wakefield has said her family has never heard of anything smaller in the retail world, and that the popcorn is always fresh. In 2016, the shop sold nine tons of popcorn, popping roughly 50 pounds on a typical weekday and more on Saturdays, according to Discover DuPage. During the pandemic, strict capacity limits kept indoor occupancy to just four customers at a time, yet an estimated 43,000 people still squeezed into the space in 2021, with lines routinely forming outside along Front Street, the Daily Herald reported.
A State Snack With Deep Illinois Roots
The shop's signature product carries some official weight beyond Wheaton. Popcorn became Illinois's designated state snack food on August 4, 2003, when then-Governor Rod Blagojevich signed Senate Bill 185 following a civics initiative led by elementary students in Joliet, according to the state government's own announcement. Illinois ranks as the third-largest popcorn-producing state in the country, with more than 300 farms cultivating roughly 47,000 acres of popcorn kernels annually, and Mason County leads the state in production, per reporting from the Illinois House Republicans' Caucus Blog.
The Wheaton City Council formally recognized the store's milestone in a January 19, 2021 proclamation, presented by then-Mayor Philip J. Suess and timed to coincide with National Popcorn Day. The shop marked the start of its 105th year in business on January 6, 2026, by giving away free small bags of popcorn to its first 105 customers, according to the store's own announcement. One tiny storefront squeezed between two buildings has now outlasted generations of Wheaton neighbors, and it still keeps its cash in a muffin tin.
