Downtown Evanston traded winter chills for warm chocolate bites Thursday evening as residents and Northwestern students floated from storefront to storefront for the Love Local Chocolate Crawl.

Hosted by nonprofit Downtown Evanston, the Love Local Chocolate Crawl invited participants to visit 20 local venues offering chocolate-themed treats while shopping and exploring the neighborhood and potentially purchasing. From newer businesses like Animal Records to Evanston staples like Bookends & Beginnings, shop owners said the event was about more than just sweets — it was about fostering community.

“I attended the food crawl that they did earlier this Fall Quarter and had a lot of fun doing it, so I wanted to come back and just see what things are offered this time around,” said Weinberg first-year Summer Fabsik.

Fabsik said Thursday’s event felt different from the fall food crawl, citing the chillier temperature as a reason why the treats and warm shop interiors were especially alluring.

Alongside her friends, Fabsik sampled churros and popped into the Grove Gallery on Grove Street that they had not visited before. 

She said events like the chocolate crawl make her more likely to return to local businesses in the future. “There’s definitely some where I will see the menu, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I wanna come back here.’ I’m tempted by a lot of the sweets.”

For business owners, return traffic is part of the appeal. 

Mary McDonald, an employee at Animal Records, which opened in late 2024, said the store tries to participate in as many community events as possible. The store offered up homemade brownies for the crawl to draw in new visitors.

“It definitely brings in a lot of people that maybe wouldn’t come in,” she said. “Maybe they don’t listen to a lot of records or CDs. But they’ll see, ‘Oh, we’re giving out free chocolate,’ and they come in, and then we get to talk to them.”

Grove Gallery director Sarah Kaiser-Amaral said she saw the crawl as a way to “facilitate community and sales.” The gallery, which exhibits local Midwestern artists, offered hot chocolate and gummy hearts to passersby. 

Kaiser-Amaral noted that more than 400 people had signed up for the event and said the increased foot traffic was noticeable.

Chocolate proved to be a simple but effective incentive to bring out the community. In the thick of early sunsets and chilly temperatures, a free brownie or cup of cocoa gave residents a reason to step inside stores, and, hopefully, come back again. 

“It definitely enhances it,” Kaiser-Amaral said. “I think we always win when there is strength in numbers, right? And so this makes it more of an event and gets people to come downtown and shop.”

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