Every so often somebody asks how a town of under a thousand people gets a news crew to drive out in the middle of February. The answer, at least once, was chocolate.

Back in February 2024, KOTA TV came to Hill City on a weekend when two things were happening at once: the Polar Bear Chili Cookoff at the Tin City Masonic Lodge, with about twenty teams ladling out their best, and our own Tour de Chocolate, the weekend we send trays of handmade treats to businesses up and down Main Street so visitors can walk the town and taste their way through it. The story they ran, “Two Hill City events coincide to bring visitors to local businesses,” made the point better than we could: when a small town puts two good reasons to visit on the same weekend, everybody’s door swings a little more often.

What April told them

Our general manager, April Purdie, talked with KOTA about why we keep sponsoring the tour year after year. As she put it, “we love giving back to those who come see us all year long.” That’s really the whole idea. The people walking Main Street in February parkas are our neighbors and our regulars — the ones who keep a candy shop going through a Black Hills winter — and one weekend a year the chocolate is simply on us.

What Tour de Chocolate actually is

If you’ve never been: each February, participating Hill City businesses set out free chocolate from our kitchen. You wander shop to shop, warm up, browse, and eat chocolate. There is no catch. The caramels, fudge, and bear paws on those trays come out of the same copper kettles as everything in our case, made by hand a few blocks away, the way we’ve done it since 1977.

The chili cookoff and the chocolate tour still land close together most winters, and between the two of them, a February Saturday in Hill City is a better time than it has any right to be. Watch this space toward the end of January for the next tour’s dates.

And if February feels too far away, the case is full right now — stop in and see us at 205 Main St in Hill City, open year-round, or at 117 Winter St in Keystone during the season.