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  • About Our Menu and MORE!

  • We are completely customer oriented! FREE WIFI, a play area for children, seating for 50 people and a changing station for the little ones is available. GREAT for the busy mom! We do our best to cater to special diets, gluten-free,vegetarian & vegan. Do not worry we have AWESOME burgers too!! We like to deliver a wonderful homemade HEALTHY meal, and if you choose you can indulge in our wonderful ice cream creations.

    Please take a look around our site. Check out our menu page to see an up to date list of what were offering. We consider our menu a “suggestion”; we WILL substitute or change it up per your request! Our Daily Soup link shows you all the healthy homemade soups made daily for your enjoyment! This link even lets you know which selections are vegan, or vegetarian qualified!

    Learn more about our history and what we’re all about on the About Us page.
    And please don’t forget to check out our specials page to find out what money saving special we have for you. We also sometimes list coupons on the specials page, so go check it out. You may even run across a new menu item we are trying out! Those of you that sign up for our email list will be sent our special “E” customer specials and coupons! Do not worry….we are not serial e-mailers, you will only get periodic emails ;) !

  • About Us

  • The Sugar Bear was created by Gary and Cindy Verdries from a converted auto service station. The store opened in May, 1976, two days after Gary and Cindy were married. They ran the Ice Cream Parlour 7 days a week until midnight. After surviving two of the worst winters in the past century, the Verdries’ sold the Sugar Bear in 1980 to The Neale family so that they could start a family. In 2004 mother and daughter, Leslie and Courtney Buhl purchased The Sugar Bear. They had one main goal, make The Sugar Bear MORE than JUST ice cream again and let it continue as a traditional dessert stop for the surrounding families!

    You can ask most any person who lives in or around Paw Paw and they all know what The Sugar Bear is all about! Courtney and Leslie started by slowly expanding the current food menu. Leslie being a vegetarian thought offering vegetarian items would be great. She has always found it VERY challenging to eat out as a vegetarian. Most restaurants do not contain vegetarian items and the ones that do really do not know how to prepare the items. They decided WHAT better place to serve vegetarian food then at The Sugar Bear where the head cook WAS vegetarian! Courtney being a person who loves wraps and burgers made it so the menu was nicely offset with something for EVERYONE! Leslie also decided soup would be a great addition. This blossomed into them offering up to 10 soups some days with a majority being vegetarian friendly. In 2008 Leslie retired, but not without still helping when needed and offering soup recipes. Courtney has continued to expand the menu. Her most recent addition is a large specialty hot dog menu, offering both all beef and veggie dogs. She keeps open discussions on The Sugar Bear Facebook page, always excepting suggestions for the menu.

    Courtney and her staff genuinely care about their customer’s satisfaction and the products that they put out. We hope you visit them soon!
    If you think that you will have trouble finding us check out our Location page for a map and directions on how to find us.

    Thanks for visiting! We hope to see you in person!



  • Read a letter to the current owner from the original owner and learn a bit of Local History!

  • Have you seen our CEILING?

    Funny question huh? Well our ceiling is one you will want to check out! It is full of ceiling tiles decorated by OUR CUSTOMERS!! You can have one too for only $10! Come check it out, some are amazingly creative!