The owner of Sussex Sweet Shop, Worthing, said they had been left with “no choice” but to permanently close the business after several incidents.
Only this month police descended on the shop, in Broadwater Street East, following an altercation involving a staff member and two men.
The staff member was taken to hospital with injuries.
Evidence bags were piled up in Broadwater cemetery and the area was cordoned off during the incident on June 5.
In 2010, the shopkeeper was forced upstairs by robbers who emptied the safe and stole a mobile phone before tying him up with tape and locking him in the bathroom.
The men ran off but the shopkeeper managed to free himself and was able to run downstairs in time to take the registration number of the robbers’ car and call the police.
Search units, including the force helicopter, were sent out and the car was stopped with the suspects inside. All stolen property was recovered.
In a message put on the door, the shop’s owner thanked customers for their support over the years but said it was no longer “worth the effort” to keep the business running amid the “ongoing attempted nighttime burglaries”.
“Thanks for your patience during the extended closure of this business and the many, many messages of support I’ve received in writing, via digital and in-person throughout. It truly means a lot to me,” it read.
“Many of you will know that this was not my first robbery here, combined with having to deal with ongoing attempted nighttime burglaries, it’s now simply not worth the effort to keep a small business running.
“So I’m off to start anew, something, anything but retail.
“I’d like to thank everyone who has supported the shop over the last seventeen and a half years. It has been extremely hard with the financial crash coupled with the insane increase in serious crime over this time. But it has been fun and I have you to thank for this. Your smiles, your stories and your laughs. I will miss many of you.”
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