If you’re at this year’s Taste of Chicago and you’re looking for your chocolate-covered strawberry fix, don’t look for Aunt Diana’s Old Fashioned Fudge. After three decades as a festival mainstay, the Riverside-based candy maker is out.

Store owner Kathleen Gits told the Landmark that she received a call April 1 from a representative from the Illinois Restaurant Association, which helps the city manage the Taste, who told Gits that Aunt Diana’s didn’t make the cut in 2010.

“She said it’s because we don’t have a Chicago address,” Gits said. “But we haven’t had a Chicago address since 2002 when we closed our Water Tower Place store. I don’t know why they chose this year.”

Cindy Gatzolis, a spokeswoman for the Mayor’s Office of Special Events in Chicago, said that Aunt Diana’s was the victim of a policy established three years ago.

“Several years back we instituted a policy saying we would accept no new restaurants from outside Chicago,” Gatzolis said. “After 2007, we said to suburban vendors that for the next three years they could remain in, but by 2010 we would not consider them if they had no city location.”

But Gits didn’t appear to be aware of that policy. In January she even received a call from the mayor’s office, she said, asking if the business was still interested in applying to be a vendor and “hoping I would.”

Aunt Diana’s was one of just four charter Taste of Chicago vendors at the 2009 event, Gits said, recalling the one-day event on Michigan Avenue in 1980. Aunt Diana’s was a relatively new business back then, having got its start in the early 1970s.

“We kind of grew up with it,” Gits said.

Eventually, Aunt Diana’s opened stores in Water Tower Place, Northbrook and Forest Park. The Riverside store at 29 E. Burlington St., its original location, is the only outlet remaining.

Taste of Chicago was a big deal for the little candy maker each summer. Gits would come to town from her Indiana home for two weeks and hire a cadre of two dozen or more college students to set up and work the tent and count ticket receipts back at the Riverside store.

“It’s going to impact a lot of people who would’ve been employed,” Gits said. “My grandson worked for me last year and was looking for some school money.”

Patty Miglore, who manages the day-to-day operation of the Riverside store remembers sitting in the store each Fourth of July from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. counting tickets from the July 3 take, the busiest day each year. The business would gross about $30,000 that one day alone and take in $180,000 over the 10 days of the Taste.

Gits said that the city’s take of the gross and other expenses meant that the business would net about $50,000 per year.

“It’s done well for us over the years,” Gits said. “We always came in the top quarter. I can’t understand why they would want to get rid of us.”

Gatzolis said that the decision to limit vendors to ones within city boundaries was to reclaim the spirit of the original Taste.

“It was about getting back to the true heart of the event,” Gatzolis said, “highlighting Chicago food vendors and not suburban ones.”

Gits said that while the business may be in Riverside, Aunt Diana’s bought three-quarters of the food sold during the event in Chicago. The strawberries and frozen bananas were purchased from Chicago vendors and the strawberries were hand-dipped with chocolate onsite at the Taste. The only thing made in Riverside was the fudge.

“We bought the majority of our products inside the city limits,” Gits said.

While losing their spot at the Taste is a blow, Gits said that it shouldn’t affect the operation of the Riverside location.

“No, I don’t think so,” Gits said. “We have a solid, good customer core who come every year for our stuff. Even with the economy, people want their chocolate.

“I can’t see terrible repercussions, but it takes away a cushion.”