Ashley Washington applies powdered sugar to a funnel cake on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022, at the TNT Funnel Cakes tent at Rockford City Market. The business she runs with her husband, Tony, is moving to Greensboro, North Carolina in August 2024. (Photo by Kevin Haas/Rock River Current)By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — The owners of a funnel cake business that expanded from a food stand into a downtown brick-and-mortar business will close up shop later this month as they prepare to move back to Greensboro, North Carolina.
TNT Funnel Cakes, which opened in November 2022 inside the former Subway at 201 W. State St., will close Aug. 17. The food stand will make its final appearance at Rockford City Market on Aug. 23.
Owners Ashley and Tony Washington plan to bring the business to Greensboro, where they had lived for 18 years before moving back to Rockford in 2020.
“It’s a beautiful, beautiful place — Greensboro, North Carolina, specifically — and there are like six colleges in one town,” said Ashley Robinson, who attended Bennett College in Greensboro after graduating from Auburn High School in 2002. “With our target audience being in that age range, that group, we just feel like it’s a better business opportunity for us for the moment.”
The business started in 2020 and became a City Market vendor in 2021, offering dozens of different flavors of funnel cakes. In 2022, they opened the brick-and-mortar storefront to run the funnel cake business year-round.
“We learned a lot with having a brick-and-mortar. It was not a bad thing. It was not a failure for us,” Ashley Robinson said. “We have no regrets, none at all, with opening our business here. The support with the food truck has been awesome. The support with the storefront was not what we expected it to be.”
French toast funnel cake at TNT Funnel Cakes, 201 W. State St., in downtown Rockford. (Photo by Kevin Haas/Rock River Current)Ultimately, she said the physical location was a higher overhead cost than made sense for their business.
“We were able to maintain and sustain and break even, and I don’t like breaking even,” she said.
She said they hope to operate multiple food trucks in multiple places, and they hope one day there can be a TNT in Rockford again.
“We 100% wanted to leave something in Rockford,” she said. “It has not panned out just yet.”
Until closing day, funnel cakes will be discounted at TNT in downtown. A full-sized funnel cake will be $10 and the 4-inch mini version is $5. The shop is open 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
“We really do love and appreciate all the support that was given to us,” Ashley Robinson said. “It’s not a goodbye, it’s 100% see you later.”
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas