Customers have told Parrot's owners, old and new, that they want the shop's products, image to stay the same

For the vast majority of businesses across the country, change is not only inevitable, it's necessary.

Businesses that don't keep up with the times -- that don't keep up with technology, that don't change their models to meet the evolving demands of their customers -- are doomed for failure.

Then there are businesses like the Parrot Confectionery.

"Change" may as well be a four-letter word at the candy shop and soda fountain on the Downtown Walking Mall in Helena.

So when the four members of the Duensing family announced last week that they're selling the business, "change" has been the big thing on the minds of not only the Duensings and the new owners, Brian and Kelly Ackerman, but on the minds of most of the longtime customers as well.

"We've had a lot of people come in and say they're happy for us, and we've had some older customers that have been in tears," said Wendy Duensing, who joined the family business around 1993 and runs the front end retail counter. "The biggest concern is, 'Is everything going to be the same?' "

Already acutely aware of how people view their new business, the Ackermans, Billings natives who are returning to Montana from Maryland, have learned since Tuesday just how important a seamless transition will be to loyal Parrot patrons. Their goal: To ensure customers can't tell the difference between the last batch of Duensing chocolates and the first batch dipped by the Ackermans.

"The 'Don't change anything' is not, 'Try to keep things mostly the same.' It's, 'Don't change anything!' " Brian Ackerman said Friday. "That level of responsibility has become abundantly clear to me over the last few days."

Currently in its 87th year in business in Helena, the Parrot has been in the same space on Last Chance Gulch since 1938 and in the Duensing family since 1956. Up until that time, the family owned a bakery in the space that's now Sommeliers on North Last Chance. The Duensings lost their lease on the bakery and were looking for an opportunity when Bill and Ianthe Post, the Parrot's founders, offered them the business.

Brothers Dusty and Dave and their wives, Pam and Wendy, have in turn owned the business for more than 20 years and worked there even longer. Dusty, a 1967 graduate of Helena High, initially worked in the Silver City Sawmill, but came to the family business in 1971 when his dad, the candy maker, became ill.

His wife joined him soon thereafter, followed by Dave and Wendy.

Surely, over the course of nearly four decades, something in the candy counter has changed?

"We added a cashew brittle," Dusty Duensing admitted. "We were making a Brazil (nut) brittle but it wasn't too popular. People seem to prefer cashews."

And when did that happen?

"That would have been sometime in the 1970s," Dusty said.

There have been a few other additions. Peanut butter fudge and rum supremes were added by the previous generation in the 1960s, and about a decade ago Dave Duensing acquired the recipe for and started making chocolate-dipped honeycomb.

See, who said nothing ever changes?

Dave Duensing, who's more often than not the face of the business when it comes to representing the Parrot on community issues, said that as the world changes faster and faster, people like some stability.

"We're like a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean: 'Ahh, there's still some place that's just the way I remember it,' " he said. "People want to see the old stuff, they want to see stuff that's been around a while. People these days want to build everything so it looks old. This stuff is original, and you can't duplicate it."

To that end, the Parrot still makes a soda the old-fashioned way, mixing syrup into soda water (versus using a modern soda gun). The juke box still plays 45s.

When she married Dusty, Pam Duensing warned her new husband not to ask her to work at the Parrot.

"But life has a way of changing things," she smiled.

Pam has specialized in candy dipping, dunking the candies Dusty makes in either milk or dark chocolate. Even using a conservative estimate of 1,500 pieces a day, Pam Duensing has probably dipped more than 10 million pieces of Parrot candy.

"The thing I'm going to miss the most is you get regular customers that you get really attached to, and they become more like family than customers," she said.

The Duensings aren't going anywhere, at least right away. The deal with the Ackermans calls for the longtime owners to stick around for a year, showing the new owners the right way to make all the candies, ice cream, chili and everything else on the menu, right down to the pineapple sauce for the soda fountain, which is made but once a year.

So Friday morning, Dusty Duensing did pretty much what he's done for the past 38 years: the day's job sheet included Turkish paste, red wafers, and vanilla and pistachio nut ice cream.

"I'm still coming to work, the only difference is I've got to punch a time clock now," he laughed.

John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington

@helenair.com.